


at the cost of my soul

by Acaeria



Series: this middle ground [1]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Body Horror, Dissociation, Gen, Manipulation, Memory Alteration, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Uncanny Valley, a magnus archives au (kinda), any and all romance is largely background and not the focus, more tags will be added as i update, the batfam are eldritch and spooky that's all you've gotta know, unreality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25034092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acaeria/pseuds/Acaeria
Summary: “I want to. Desperately, I want to. I want to believe that when this is over, I will still be human enough to love.”There are beings that exist outside of this world, that prey on the fear of those within it. There are three types of people in this world: bystanders, who will go their whole lives without ever knowing the truth; victims, who will be fed upon by the Dread Powers; and Avatars, those who the Powers choose to infect and corrupt and turn monstrous and do their bidding.Bruce turns into a monster, adopts a pack of monster children, and maybe finds salvation somewhere along the way.A Magnus Archives AU.
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon & Jim Gordon, Cassandra Cain & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain, Talia al Ghul/Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Series: this middle ground [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1821997
Comments: 21
Kudos: 74





	1. stuck swimming in shadows down here

**Author's Note:**

> So! I wasn't planning on uploading this until after I'd finished writing the whole thing, but I just really loved writing the first chapter and I wanted people to read it so here it is.
> 
> You don't really have to know that much about the Magnus Archives to get this- all you need to know is that there are eldritch fear entities that choose humans to be their avatars and turn them into monsters, for a certain definition of monster. Gertrude Robinson, who appears briefly in this first chapter, is a minor TMA character. 
> 
> This is more a series of interconnected one-shots than an actual multichapter. I'm not 100% on what'll be in the other chapters, so I'll tag for those as I update. For this chapter, content warnings for non-graphic character death and minor violence.

He hates to admit that he is afraid of the dark.

It is a child’s fear, his oldest fear, a fear borne of ignorance. He was too young, back then, to understand the things in life that he should truly fear, and so he had feared the dark, feared the things it hid, what he could not see or understand or control. He was so _young_ , back then.

His parents had smiled. Left a night-light on his bedside table. Told him, _"I_ _t’s okay, champ, it can’t hurt you, it’s just the absence of light. There’s nothing there_.” 

He knows, now, that they were wrong.

* * *

He is eight when his parents die. He watches them fall. Sees the blood seep out over the pavement. Hears someone sobbing, distantly, and realises that it is him, crying his eyes out even as the numbness sets in. 

It is dark in the alleyway. Cast in the glow of a single streetlight, he feels it press in on him, suffocating, held at bay by the light. His eyes drift from the bodies, up, to the shadows surrounding him, and he feels a presence– _its_ presence. It’s watching him, somehow, even without eyes, curious and hungry. He thinks he hears it whisper, something in a language that is not words, but he understands, anyway.

 _Come here,_ it breathes into his mind. _Come away from the light, the bodies, the blood. Come here, and let me hold you._

And he wants, in that moment, he wants so desperately to do so– he wants to be held, to be comforted, to feel safe, when every security he’s ever had was just stolen away from him with the firing of a gun. But he is afraid of the dark, and that makes him pause, and then the police are there, speaking to him, words that are garbled and hard to hear through the roaring of blood in his ears, and he is being bundled up in a blanket and held, and held, and held.

And when he thinks to look up again, the darkness is empty once more.

* * *

He spends a lot of time, after his parents’ death, wandering the manor, flitting from light to light, watching the dark. It happens more and more often, that the darkness is alive, that the shadows try to call out to him. Their language is strange, less heard and more felt, and he understands it, though he doesn’t understand how.

 _You are hurting,_ it says. _You surround yourself with light, and in that light, you must face the harsh truths and realities of this world, the things you are too young to be forced to know. Come into the shadows. Allow us to shelter you, from the things you are not yet ready to accept._

But he is scared, he is so so scared of the dark, because yes, he and his parents were stood in the light but their murderer had been shrouded in darkness, and _they_ were the ones who told him that there was nothing to fear from the dark, and he knows, now, that they were wrong.

So he finds Alfred, and he curls up by the butler’s knee, and the old man looks at him with such sadness as he runs a hand through his hair and says, “ _Oh_ , Master Bruce,” voice thick and soft. And Bruce closes his eyes, forces back tears, and leans into the touch, and waits for the shadows to stop whispering. 

* * *

_It doesn’t go away._ It _should_ go away. The dark is a children’s fear. But those children simply fear that they do not know what is there, and Bruce fears that he _does_ know what is there, that by knowing that he has stumbled upon something no human should ever know. 

He falls, one day. He is walking the grounds, enjoying the sun, the absence of shadows, when the earth gives way beneath his feet and he falls, down, down, down, into darkness, the light from above growing dimmer and dimmer. In the darkness, something moves, and then another something, and he hears an inhuman cry that strikes terror into his bones, and then the darkness is moving, flying, clawing at him, and he curls into a ball on the ground-below-ground and _screams_. 

When Alfred finds him later, bloody and dirty, tear-tracks down his face, he takes him into his arms and holds him tight in the light of the setting sun.

“Alfred,” he says, voice hoarse. “Alfred, I’m afraid. I’m so afraid.”

The butler’s face crumples. “I am _so_ sorry, Master Bruce,” he says, calm as anything, like his heart isn’t breaking. “I will book us some plane tickets. I think it’s time we visit an old friend.”

* * *

Gertrude Robinson is an older woman, her hair greying, her face pinched in a stern expression, and Bruce knows from the moment he lays eyes on her why she and Alfred get along. She ushers them into her office in the basement of the Magnus Institute, serves them tea and biscuits, and levels Alfred with a pointed look. 

“I assume you are not here for a social call, Mr. Pennyworth.”

Alfred shakes his head, places a hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “I believe,” he says, “That the young master is being targeted by one of your entities.”

Gertrude looks at him, and then she looks at Bruce, expression thoughtful and entirely unsympathetic. “Is that so?” she says. She reaches into her desk, pulls out a tape recorder, sets it on the desk. “What’s your name, boy?”  
“Bruce,” Bruce says, voice quiet. “Bruce Wayne.”

She nods. Presses record. “Statement of Bruce Wayne, regarding his life-long fear of the dark.”

* * *

Bruce doesn’t mean to give the statement. But once she finishes the introduction, levelling an expectant look at him, he cannot help himself, the words spilling out of him, and he didn’t realise, before, how desperately he’d needed to tell someone, for someone to understand. Alfred watches him the entire time, his hand a comforting presence on his shoulder, and Bruce can feel him growing more and more concerned as the words come. He almost wants to stop, or at least censor himself, to preserve the old man’s worry, but he _can’t_ stop. He thinks, distantly, that his lack of control should worry him, but he just feels _relief_. He is speaking, and the words are right, and he is being listened to, and, maybe, he thinks, as he sees the spark in Gertrude’s eye, maybe even understood. 

Finally, he sits back, exhausted and drained, and Gertrude stops the recording. The three of them sit in silence, for a long moment. Gertrude’s eyes flicker to the mug set in front of Bruce.

“Drink your tea, Mr. Wayne,” she says. He does so, wordlessly. It’s warm. Comforting. 

“Is there anything we can do?” Alfred asks. Gertrude sighs.

“Nothing much more than you _have_ been doing, I’m afraid. Keep him in the light. Stay away from the shadows. Do not converse with the Dark. But you will have to confront the fact that you cannot fight this forever.” 

Alfred’s grip on Bruce’s shoulder tightens. Bruce presses his lips together, stares down into his tea. Gertrude Robinson looks at them, face impassive, and then sighs.

“I can get you some information, on what you’re dealing with. I can even maybe set you up with some of my contacts. But I can’t promise you a way out of this. Sooner or later, the Dark _will_ take him.”

“We’ll take anything you can give us,” Alfred says. Bruce doesn’t speak. He closes his eyes.

* * *

Later, as they sit in the hotel room, the files that Gertrude had passed on scattered around them, Bruce finally breaks.

“I don’t want this,” he says, helplessly, to Alfred. “God help me, Alfred, I’m so afraid.”  
“Oh, lad, I know,” Alfred says, pulling him into an embrace. “I don’t want this for you either, Master Bruce, I am _so_ sorry.” 

And Bruce looks down at the statements, of people who were taken by the Dark, their light stolen and their selves twisted and wonders what he will become by the end of this. Wonders what kind of monster this will make of him. Knows, from Gertrude’s neat notes, that not even death could save him from his patron.

“I don’t want to hurt people,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt _you_.”

“Oh, Master Bruce,” Alfred says. “I know you don’t. I know, lad, I know.” 

He doesn’t say, _you won’t hurt me_ , doesn’t say, _it’s going to be okay_ , doesn’t say, _we’ll find a way to prevent this_. They both know those things aren’t true. So Bruce just clings to this man who is essentially his father, and finds what little comfort he can in his arms.

* * *

Bruce throws himself into research. He contacts Gertrude’s contacts, follows leads, learns as much as he possibly can, because the Dark is the fear of the unknown, and in order to combat it he must _know_. He meets Avatars and Monsters alike, speaks with them, fights with them, and he learns. Learns that they, once, were as scared as he is now, scared of what they were becoming. How, over time, they had learned to stop being afraid, learned to love what they once feared, had embraced this new state of being over and over again.

 _It gets easier_ , they told him. _The hunger turns into want, and then you stop caring_. 

He doesn’t want to stop caring. Whenever he voices this thought, they laugh at him.

 _Are you sure you’re one of us?_ they ask. _Maybe you’re a Victim, instead_ . _You certainly act like one._ He does not want to be a victim. He does not want to be a monster. These are the only choices he has.

Ra’s al Ghul is an Avatar of the End, ancient and undying, patiently bringing death to those around him. He is willing to help Bruce– at least, to help him accept the inevitable. It’s kind of like the grief counselling he’d gone through after his parents’ deaths, and nothing like that at all. It’s almost funny.

Ra’s al Ghul has a daughter. Talia, he learns, when she decides to take him to the local market one afternoon, is like him. She is afraid. Her father wants her to join him, to submit to the End, and she can hear its calling.

“I do not,” she tells him, hesitant even as she’s sure, “Want to be like my father. I do not wish to sew destruction in that way.”

He nods. He understands; she knows he understands. He does not have to say it in words. She picks up fruit from a nearby stall, flicks the owner a couple of coins, and hands one to him. He takes a bite; it is sweet. She smiles. Takes him by the hand. The desert sun beats down heavy on the market, and he is warm, surrounded by light. 

And despite everything, despite what he knows, it is the first time in a long time that he has hope.

* * *

Talia comes to him, one night, crawling in through his window. He startles awake, eyes landing on her. The lamp is still on; he never sleeps in a dark room, not if he can help it. She is smiling, when she sees him, not with her mouth but with her eyes, and there is an air of desperation surrounding her. “Beloved,” she says. “I think I have found a way to save us.”

He sits up, gestures her to sit on the bed beside him. She does, taking a deep breath, and tells him. He takes in the information, sitting there and letting her speak, thoughtfully mulling over the words.

“It’s not exactly salvation,” he tells her, when she’s done. She shakes her head.

“No. But it _is_ control.”

He thinks about that. He cannot stop himself from becoming a monster, this he knows– but maybe, just maybe, he can decide what kind of monster he becomes. He thinks about all of the people, all of the creatures, he’s met, on his crusade for knowledge, thinks of their smug smiles and callous words and the mingled fear and anger that burns within him whenever he’s faced with it, and he thinks he’s made a decision.

He takes her hand. “Thank you, Talia,” he tells her, earnest. She nods. Reaches up, cups his face, kisses him gently. Pulls back, leans her forehead against his.

“Will you still love me,” she asks, “When I am no longer human?”

“Will you love me?” he asks her, in return. She hums.

“I want to,” she tells him, lacing their fingers. “Desperately, I want to. I want to believe that when this is over, I will still be human enough to love.” 

Bruce thinks, to all the monsters he’s met. Most of them were alone. He does not want to be alone.

“I don’t want love to be human,” he replies. “If I am going to be a monster, I want to be a monster that loves.”

She kisses him, and he kisses back.

* * *

He leaves the al Ghuls, and he searches for the wolves he’s met. They regard him suspiciously, but when he explains his reasoning, they grin wickedly, and allow him to join them on a Hunt. He is afraid of them, too, but it is not the same as being afraid of the Dark– with hunters, at least, he knows where he stands. He knows he could, theoretically, defend himself if it came down to it. He understands them. They are _knowable_. 

He wants to be knowable, he thinks, as he runs. A pack, he wants, as they corner their prey. If he has to be a monster, then let him be a monster like this: one who protects the world from the other monsters within it, one who works with others to protect the innocent, one who hungers for the flesh of those who do not care about those they hurt.

The Hunt ends. He thanks the wolves, and leaves. He returns home, where Alfred waits for him.

“Master Bruce,” he greets. “Did you find what you were looking for?” 

Bruce thinks on it, for a moment. “I found something,” he says. “I can’t save myself, Alfred.”

“I know, sir.”

“Maybe I can save others,” he finishes. The corner of Alfred’s mouth perks up in what is almost a smile.

“Come, sit with me,” the butler gestures, “Tell me what you’re planning.”

* * *

He goes down into the caves. He’s not sure why, but this place– it feels right. He stands in a large, hollowed-out cavern, the darkness banished only by the flashlight he had brought with him, and listens to the shadows call.

 _It’s time,_ they tell him, _You cannot run from us any longer. You must accept what you are becoming. Where you belong._

And he _knows_ that he is a creature of the night, of the Dark, and that he has been for _years_ , but he also knows that that is not all that he is. He has a choice. He _always_ has a choice.

He points the flashlight up, illuminating the bats that hang from the cave’s ceiling. They startle awake, crying out, and slowly, they unlatch themselves from the roof, and begin to fly down towards him. He grits his teeth, and extinguishes the light.

The bats tear into him, screeching, turning his flesh bloody, and he struggles to breathe as leathery wings cover his face, fill his mouth and plug his nose. He chokes, and splutters, and bleeds, and he wants to scream but he _can’t_. The darkness screams for him, angry and betrayed. The bats scream for him, hungry and desperate. 

And then, all at once, it is over. He fumbles for the flashlight, finds it abandoned on the floor, and clicks on the light.

The bats are gone. The darkness is quiet. He breathes, heavily, and he knows that he is different, that he is changed. He thinks of Alfred, in the manor above, and feels a familiar surge of love and gratitude and protection. He lets out a shaky laugh, pulls himself to his feet. He wraps the darkness around himself like a blanket. His canines feel sharp in his mouth. His fingers ache, twisted into claws. 

He is a monster. He has not lost. 

He turns and walks into the light. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All titles in this fic are taken from Sleeping at Last songs. The fic title (and now the series title!) is from Mercury: "i know, the further i go / the harder i try, only keeps my eyes closed / and somehow i've fallen in love / with this middle ground at the cost of my soul"
> 
> & this chapter title is from Four: "i'm stuck swimming in shadows down here / it's been forever, since i came up for air / flashlight in hand, determined to find / authenticity"


	2. if we’re made of dust, what makes us any different?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So. Dick may have been born human, but he’d never been human, not really, because he’d been raised by monsters to be a monster, and he’d never really had a problem with that.  
> Until now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update with some content warnings i forgot to add: death, body horror, and themes that could potentially be associated with child abuse.

Dick Grayson doesn’t think he’s ever been human.

Well. He knows he must have been, once. He isn’t a monster in the way capital-M-Monsters are, isn’t some manifestation of dread, some cut-off part of an eldritch entity’s limb. He was born human, that he’s pretty sure of.

But his parents were in the circus, and so were their parents before them, and he’s not sure how far back that goes but he knows it’s been a while. And no one in the circus is human, not anymore. Their smiles are too wide, their limbs bend too far, their walks just ever-so-slightly off. Unsettling. Unnatural. He grew up surrounded by Avatars and Monsters, living mannequins and patchwork people, those with plastic skin who bled blood and those with flesh stuffed full of cotton. When most children played catch with their parents, they’d toss a ball back and forth; when Dick and his parents played, they’d toss his mother’s severed head, and she’d laugh the whole time. 

So. Dick may have been born human, but he’d never  _ been _ human, not really, because he’d been raised by monsters to  _ be _ a monster, and he’d never really had a problem with that. He  _ liked _ showing off by contorting his body into positions it should never have been able to support. He  _ liked _ soaring in front of a crowd, meeting the gaze of someone in the audience, and smiling, just a little  _ too _ wide, just enough to make them nervous. He  _ liked _ sitting up on the trapeze platform and watching as the rest of the circus tormented and took apart their victims, inch by inch by inch. He  _ liked _ reuniting with his parents afterwards, where they’d ruffle his hair, and say, “Good job, son,” and tell him that maybe next time, he could help them take apart their victim, how does that sound? And his father would plaster a new face on top of his own, and say, “How does this make me look?” and they’d laugh, and laugh, and laugh. 

* * *

Of course, it didn’t last.

* * *

News of him had reached the circus, of course, hushed whispers and heads-up from their allies, other disciples of the Stranger, or their allies in other domains.  _ There’s a new Hunter,  _ they said.  _ He’s coming after us, all of us. He does not show mercy. _

Dick hadn’t been scared; he hadn’t even  _ thought _ to be scared. He was part of the  _ circus _ , what was there to be afraid of? 

So he is surprised when the Batman crashes down through the roof of the circus. He is surprised when the others scream, and scatter. He watches his parents fall from the trapeze, and they don’t get up, and he just stands, and stares, because that fall shouldn’t have hurt them, but the Batman had pushed them, and he was a Hunter, and he remembers, distantly, being told that he  _ should _ be afraid of Hunters, because they are the only ones who can really, truly hurt people like them. He just hadn’t known how to be afraid, not until this moment, and now it’s all he can feel, thrumming through his veins. 

This is the first time in his life that he feels fear. It will not be the last.

Eventually, the screams die down and the audience has fled and Dick stands alone, staring down at the ruins of his life, and the Batman lands on the platform beside him, levelling him with a look that Dick cannot read yet.

“You’re a child,” the Batman says.

“Yes,” Dick says.

“Are you a real child?” the Batman asks. Dick shrugs. “How old are you?”

“Nine.”

“Nine what?”

“Years.”

“You’re nine years old?” Dick nods. “Why are you with the circus?” Dick gestures to the bodies below.

“My parents,” he says, and he feels oddly disconnected from his body, from the words. The Batman, he thinks, looks regretful, which is funny– why would a Hunter regret the Hunt? It’s their nature. It’s what they do. Dick levels the Batman with a dull look. “Are you going to kill me too?”

The Batman stares. Then, he shakes his head. “No.”

“Oh.” Dick’s body slumps, though he can’t figure out if it’s with relief or disappointment. “I’m not sure I can run the circus by myself.”

“Come with me,” the Batman offers, holding out a hand, and Dick stares, uncomprehending.

“With you?” he asks. “But… why?” 

“You are a child,” the Batman says, echoing his earlier statement. 

Dick shakes his head. “ _ I _ am a monster.  _ You _ are a Hunter.”

“I am a monster,” the Batman says. “The difference between us is not whether or not we feel that hunger, but rather, what we hunger for. Come with me.”

Dick hesitates. Looks down at the ruins of his life. Looks up, at the animalistic man before him, shrouded in a cloak of darkness. 

He takes the offered hand, and allows the Batman to spirit him away. 

* * *

Being with the Batman– with  _ Bruce _ – is fun, because for the first time in his life, Dick gets to be human.

Well, not really, but he gets to  _ pretend _ , and he’s always loved pretending. He practices for hours in front of the mirror how to smile without splitting his skin, tries out his laughs with Bruce to figure out which one is the  _ least _ unnerving. He goes to malls and coffee shops and watches people  _ move _ , copies them, mimicking one person’s walk and then another’s, until he figures out what’s in the range of normal, and then, what  _ his _ style is, because copying is fun and all but he wants his  _ own _ , too.

“Very good, Master Dick,” Alfred says with a small smile, as Dick shows off his newly built totally-normal-and-definitely-not-creepy style of movement. “You look quite human, if I do say so myself.”   
Dick grins. Shovels some porridge into his mouth. Doesn’t even open it  _ too _ wide. 

* * *

He goes to school. Plays at being a normal boy.  _ Richard Grayson _ , normal kid, taken in by a billionaire when an unfortunate accident at the circus he’d grown up in had stolen his parents away. At night, he follows the Batman on his Hunts, and twists and contorts and bends to his heart’s content, as he helps the Batman bring Monsters and Avatars to their knees.

“To justice,” Bruce tells him. “What we do is justice.”

“What’s justice?” he asks. 

“It is when people who have done wrong get what they deserve.”

Dick hums. Swings his legs. “Is being a monster wrong?”

“Hurting innocents is,” Bruce says. “When you turn innocent people into your victims, that’s wrong.”

Dick runs his fingers in patterns on the ledge of the roof. “Were my parents wrong?”

“They killed people.”

“They were the _audience_.”

“They were innocent.”

“Why did you save me?” he asks, abruptly. Bruce sighs. Wraps an arm around him.

“Because you were innocent, too.”

* * *

“Alfred,” Dick asks one evening, when Bruce is away, “Is it wrong to miss my parents?”   
The look Alfred gives him is startled. “Heavens, no, Master Dick, why would you ask that?”

“Bruce says that they were wrong. To hurt people. To feed on the audience.”

“And they may very well have been, Master Dick. But they were your parents. They loved you. It’s okay to miss them.” 

Dick nods. Sits in silence for a moment. Says, “I think I do. Miss them. I think… I think I miss them a lot.” He looks down at his hands. The fingers are just a little too long. When he speaks next, his voice is barely louder than a whisper. “I miss them so much.”

“Oh, Master Dick.”

Alfred holds him as he cries. It’s the first time he’s ever cried. He doesn’t hate the sensation, he doesn’t think, he just wishes it didn’t  _ hurt _ so much. 

It hurts less when it’s over. As if all of that pain had poured out of him with his tears. 

“Thank you,” he sniffles, wiping at his eyes.

“Of course, Master Dick,” Alfred says, running a hand through his hair. “You’ve lived a hard and complicated life. It is okay to feel sad about it.” Dick nods. Alfred smiles. “How about some hot chocolate? I quite say you’ve earned it.”

* * *

“Dick,” Bruce pleads, “Chum. What’s wrong?”   
They’re down in the cave below the manor, which means that Bruce is not Bruce but  _ the Batman _ . It’s still weird to Dick, how he compartmentalises these two parts of his life, Upstairs, in the manor, during the day, he is Bruce Wayne, Normal Human Man, and at night, in the cave and on the streets, he is the Batman, a monster and a Hunter, a thing of the night. Dick is just always Dick, regardless of whether he’s Hunting at night or at school during the day. Even Richard Grayson, Normal Human Boy, is something Dick has incorporated into himself, because he worked  _ hard _ to learn to be that, and he’s not going to go around and act like it isn’t him, skilled enough at being Strange to be  _ normal _ . 

“Dick,” Batman says again, and Dick grits his teeth, balling his hands into fists.

“I am angry at you,” he tells his mentor, and it feels  _ exciting _ , to be angry. He doesn’t think he’s ever been angry before; he hadn’t been allowed to, really, growing up. Circus-creatures were meant to be happy, always, meant to make other people laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Dick doesn’t want to laugh anymore. It feels like a victory. 

“I guessed that one, chum,” Batman sighs. “Why are you angry at me?”

“You hurt people,” Dick says. Batman blinks.

“I Hunt monsters,” he corrects. Dick shakes his head.

“You  _ hurt _ people. You talk a big game, about  _ innocence _ and  _ justice _ , but you– you’re no different from the things we Hunt!” 

Batman seems baffled. The darkness around him is less impenetrable, now, the sharpness of his features softening, and he seems more like Bruce, despite the context around him. “Where is this coming from?” he asks. 

“You–!” Dick’s voice raises to a shout, distorting, and he cuts himself off, breathing heavily, trying to regain control over himself. “You killed my parents. My family. Everything I knew, you took it from me.” He glares at Bruce. “But you saved me. Because I was ‘innocent’.” He punctuates the word with air-quotes. “You didn’t  _ kill _ me, but you still  _ hurt _ me, Bruce! You– You– You took  _ everything _ from me. It  _ hurts _ .” He’s crying, again, and that makes him even angrier. He feels pathetic. He doesn’t want to be  _ pathetic _ . “It  _ hurts _ .” 

The expression on Bruce’s face is mingled shock and horror and heartbreak. He steps towards Dick, holding a hand out, offering comfort, but Dick doesn’t want it, he doesn’t want to accept comfort from the man who– who– 

He pulls away, sharply, wrapping his arms around himself. “You’re no different,” he says again, lowly. “You’re a  _ monster _ .” 

“Dick.” Bruce’s voice is thick. “Dick, I’m so, so sorry.” Dick laughs, but it’s not like the laughs of his childhood. It’s bitter and angry and devoid of amusement. “I don’t– There’s nothing I can do, to make this up to you. I know that, god, Dick, I know. But you have to understand– I never  _ wanted _ this. I don’t– I don’t have a choice. The Hunt, it calls me, I have to–” 

“You  _ have _ a choice, Bruce!” Dick yells. “You’ve  _ always _ had a choice! You  _ chose _ the Hunt! It didn’t want  _ you _ , you wanted  _ it _ !” 

“It was the only way to save myself from the Dark, Dick, you know that–” 

“The only difference between what the Hunt and the Dark would have made you do is that with the Hunt, you can lie to yourself and tell yourself that you’re not hurting  _ people _ , you’re just hurting  _ monsters _ , you’re not actually a killer, but– you  _ are _ ! You are, Bruce, you can’t just– just–”

“Well, what do you  _ want _ me to do?” Bruce demands, and he is angry now, and Dick’s lips twist themselves into a cruel, toothy smile that is really more of a grimace. “I can’t just stop, Dick, if I don’t Hunt I’ll  _ die _ , and then where would you be?” 

“Better off, I’m sure!” Dick shoots back, and then the cave was silent as they stared at each other, breathing ragged, hearts hammering. 

“Dick…” Bruce says, voice breaking. Dick ignores him, pushing past on his way towards the stairs. He stomps back up to the manor, feeling Bruce’s gaze boring into him the entire time.

* * *

Dick doesn’t see Bruce for a week, after that. It’s a big house. Alfred shoots him disappointed looks from time to time, and Dick tries not to let it bother him. He feels– vindicated, he thinks. Triumphant. He’d stood up to  _ the Batman _ , and he’d walked away on top.

When he next sees Bruce, it’s when the man cracks his bedroom door. It’s late, and he’s lying in bed, scrolling through cute animal videos on his phone. It’s hard to sleep this early; normally, he’d be out on a hunt with Batman right around now. He rolls over, turning his back to Bruce as he makes his way into the room. Feels the bed compress as he sits down. Keeps his eyes fixed to the image of cat playing with a fountain that fills his phone screen. 

“You were right,” Bruce says, after a moment of silence, and Dick stiffens, because– what? 

“What?” he says.

“You were right,” Bruce repeats. “I… I was so scared of the monster that the Dark was turning me into, so relieved that the Hunt let me escape it, that I didn’t even think to be worried about what  _ it _ was turning me into. I… I’ve done a lot of wrong. I’ve hurt a lot of people. I hurt you. But I’m not… I don’t want to. Any more.”

“But if you don’t Hunt, you’ll die,” Dick points out. 

“I think I’ve found a compromise.” Dick rolls over at that, looks up at Bruce, sees his face for the first time all week. He looks tired– no, he looks  _ ill _ . His skin is deathly pale, the bags under his eyes dark like bruises.

“Bruce,” he says, worried, despite himself. “Have you not been out all week?”

Bruce shakes his head. “I’ve been looking for solutions. I think I’ve found something.” Dick hesitates, then gestures for him to go on. “There’s a woman. Amanda Waller. She’s an Avatar. Buried. They call her the Warden.” 

“She can help?” Dick asks. 

“She has– a  _ prison _ , of sorts. It’s– they’ll be Buried. It won’t be pleasant for them. But they won’t be dead. It’s– a compromise. I can’t  _ stop _ . But nobody else has to die.”

Dick nods. They sit in silence for a moment, and then he blurts, “I didn’t mean it. What I said. About being better off without you. I…” He swallows, closes his eyes. “I was just  _ angry _ .”

“I know, chum. It’s okay. I’m not mad at you.” He reaches out, runs a hand through Dick’s hair. Dick leans into the touch.

“I…” Dick takes a breath. “I miss my parents. A lot. And I miss the circus. But I… God, B, I never had a  _ choice _ . I don’t– I never– I’ve always been  _ this _ . You– you got a childhood. You got to be human. I’ve always been this. I’ll always  _ be _ this. I’ve never had the chance to be anything else, and I never will. And if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t– I wouldn’t even care. But… you gave me a chance. To  _ pretend _ , at least. To play at being something else. And I– it’s  _ fun _ . You know, I– I feel more these days? The other day, that was the first time I’ve ever been angry in my life. We didn’t  _ have _ that in the circus. I don’t…” He huffs, in frustration. “I miss it. I’m not glad you killed my parents, and I never  _ will _ be, and some part of me will always hate you for that, but… I think I’m scared. Of what I would have been. Without you.”

He cracks open his eyes, and startles. Bruce is  _ crying _ . Bruce is– 

He sits up, startled. “Hey, what are you–” He’s cut off when Bruce pulls him into a hug. “Are you– are you  _ okay? _ ”

Bruce  _ laughs _ , and okay, now Dick is  _ really _ confused. “I’ve been scared, this past week,” Bruce tells him. “Of what I’m becoming. Of what I would still be becoming, if you hadn’t– if you hadn’t opened my eyes. You saved me, Dick. I’m– I regret, what I did, what I took from you, but I can’t regret you, Dick, you’re– you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Dick squeezes harder, at that. “We’re both a bit of a mess, aren’t we?” he asks, voice light. He  _ feels _ light, for the first time in a long time. Bruce pulls back, smiles at him.

“You know,” he says. “When I first started– started  _ losing _ , I was afraid that I would lose– this. Connection. Care. I thought I’d end up alone, and I was so scared of it. That’s part of why I chose the Hunt– because they were the only Avatars I’d ever met who seemed to work together. The wolves have packs. I wanted– I needed that.”

Dick smirks. “Is this your way of telling me we’re family?” he asks. Bruce laughs.

It’s a nice sound. Dick thinks he could get used to it.

* * *

It can’t stay this way forever. Dick knows that. He knows that what they’re trying to navigate, the line between Avatar and monster and human, is narrow and slippery and  _ hard _ . He knows that they’re going to fail, one day. That Bruce will one day become more animal than human, will lose himself in the Hunt, will stop dragging people to the Warden’s chambers and instead tear into them with razor-sharp teeth. He knows that he will one day forget how to pretend, forget how to feel, become evermore twisted and Strange. That, or they will both die, cutting themselves off from life in order to preserve their humanity. 

But for now, Dick thinks, as he swings from rooftop to rooftop, following a man so cloaked in shadow that he is darker than the night around them, for now, he can be content, to be both Strange and human, Avatar and child, monster and innocent, a hunter in Batman’s pack, Bruce Wayne’s adopted son. For now, this can be enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's chapter title is from The Projectionist: "but even dust was made to settle / and if we're made of dust, then what makes us any different? / i guess we give what we've been given: / a family tree so very good at giving up" 
> 
> This one was a little harder to write than the first, but it was definitely fun. Next up is probably Babs, so keep an eye out for that!


	3. to exonerate my blind eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all starts to come together, to form a picture. Her eyes track the lines of string, making connections, quick and clever. Her father knocks on the door, tells her dinner’s ready, and she chimes that she’ll be right there.
> 
> She looks at the board. She thinks that he may be involved, somehow, though she can’t quite see the shape of it. She thinks she may be, too. A piece of the puzzle she’s yet to slot into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings! i just realised i forgot to add them for last chapter, so i'll go back and do that. this chapter: obsession, injury, brief description of vomiting, maybe a little victim-blaming? also brief mentions of the joker and some spiral bs. 
> 
> this chapter would have been up earlier, except i managed to injure myself and then i didn't sleep for like 32 hours straight. i also didn't sleep last night, but i decided to utilise my insomnia to write. if this reads like it was written in a sleep-deprived haze, it's because it was.

Barbara should have known better.

* * *

Babs is smart. She always has been. She’s been bringing home A-grades ever since her teachers had started grading her work. But she’s more than just book-smart: she’s pattern-smart. Sorting-smart. Her brain fits things into place before most people have even realised there’s a place for them to fit. It’s why she’s always been good at math: she can just look at a string of numbers and see where they should go in relation to one another, easy as pi. Math is easy; math is  _ boring _ . Words are better, because the patterns are harder to spot, but she can, with time. She notes the way sentence structures play into each other, the repetition of sounds, the average number of letters that pass before one occurs again. It all means something, she’s  _ sure _ , but she doesn’t know what. That was the part about patterns that always eluded her: the understanding. Knowing not just what they  _ are _ , but what they  _ mean _ .

Here’s the thing about school, though: you don’t have to understand, you just have to know. They test you on memory, not application, and so she’s a straight-A student from kindergarten to graduation. 

* * *

Babs doesn’t understand, she  _ knows _ . One day in second grade, she insists to her teacher that Billy Portson needs their help, that he’s fallen and broken his ankle down the back of the climbing frame where no one else can see, despite the fact that she spends her recesses inside, organising the bookshelves in their classroom. She finds it relaxing, something to soothe the buzzing under her skin that comes with hours of lessons and patterns that she cannot help but to know. She sorts them by author, title, colour, genre, number of times the letter Q is printed, finding more and more niche systems to sort them by, hoping that one day she’ll find one that doesn’t have some kind of pattern so convoluted it makes her mind ache. Miss Roudigrez lets her, and even seems interested about Babs’ process, when she asks. Babs likes Miss Roudigrez.

Anyway. Billy Portson. Miss Roudigrez is doubtful, when Babs insists that they go and help him, but in the end she agrees. It’s almost certainly just to humour Babs, but it doesn’t matter, because when they reach the climbing frame, sure enough, Billy is there, quiet and crying, his ankle twisted at an unnatural angle. And the look Miss Roudigrez gives Babs is startled and concerned and contemplative all at once, and then ultimately forgotten in the chaos that follows. 

“How did you know,” Miss Roudigrez asks, weeks later, “That Billy had fallen?”

Babs just shrugs. “I had a feeling,” is what she says.  _ I saw a pattern _ , she thinks,  _ and this was its natural conclusion. I don’t know why, or how it works. I just know _ .

She knows Miss Roudigrez will never understand. She knows  _ no one _ will ever understand. She  _ herself _ doesn’t understand. 

She isn’t sure she wants to.

* * *

She knows that Dick Grayson isn’t human the moment she lays eyes on him.

She isn’t sure what gives it away: by the time she meets him, he’s skilled enough at the whole human act to not let on to anyone who isn’t already in the know, and Babs isn’t. But she  _ knows _ he isn’t human, because the patterns tell her so, and the patterns never lie. The sky is blue, the grass is green, the wind is coming from 23 degrees northwest, and Dick Grayson is Strange.

More than that, he’s the first piece in a new pattern, one that will take her time and effort to puzzle out, and  _ that _ . That’s exciting. She dedicates herself to this new pattern with a passion she didn’t know she had, and feels as if she’s attempting to reverse-engineer the very fabric of reality, which, well, maybe she  _ is _ . 

Dick Grayson. Strange.  _ Stranger _ . Bruce Wayne, the Batman, Hunter, hunted.  _ The Hunt. The Dark _ . Words and concepts that come to her, unbidden, bright. She follows them on their Hunts, and they watch her, warily, from afar. Dick waves, arm too long, coming undone at the joints. Babs waves back.

They let her join their Hunts, and she helps them stalk and corner and pin their prey, and more pieces of the pattern slot into place.  _ Slaughter. Desolation. Buried.  _ She builds a conspiracy board in her mind, and then another in her bedroom, in the spot behind the wardrobe where her dad won’t find it. 

It all starts to come together, to form a picture. Her eyes track the lines of string, making connections, quick and clever. Her father knocks on the door, tells her dinner’s ready, and she chimes that she’ll be right there.

She looks at the board. She thinks that he may be involved, somehow, though she can’t quite see the shape of it. She thinks she may be, too. A piece of the puzzle she’s yet to slot into place.

* * *

She gets a degree in library science. She likes it. It’s all patterns, organisation and sorting and knowing. She makes sense in it, relishes the feeling as she wanders through the rows of books at Gotham Library.

On the day she receives her diploma, she takes a photo with her father, smiling in her gown. It’s a good photo; a good day. She sees the patterns, and knows what is to come, and everything is good and logical and knowable.

She doesn’t know that it’s about to stop making sense.

* * *

Her dad is acting strange.

Not Strange-strange, not like Dick, but  _ strange _ , odd, out of sorts. He startles more easily, jumps at shadows, like a skittish child and not the tough-skinned cop she knows he is. She knows it’s not some kind of new trauma, nothing terrible has happened down at the precinct, nothing more terrible than usual, anyways. She hears him mutter to himself, when he thinks she’s not around, hears him pacing the halls at night. She finds pages and pages of notebook paper, torn out and torn up and scattered around. She collects the pieces, puts them back together.

They’re full of equations, but not the type she likes, not the type that slot easily into place with their patterns. No, they’re the type that make her mind buzz and her skin crawl, and her eyes strain from trying to comprehend them. The first time she manages to piece together a full page of them, they fill her with such a sense of panic that she grabs the lighter she keeps in her room to light the scented candles she keeps on her desk, and burns the paper to a blackened crisp. She sits there, heart pounding, staring at the ashes, wondering what just happened, what it was about the numbers that had unnerved her so badly. 

She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t even know where to start  _ looking _ , and that scares her so badly that she leaves her room via rooftop, and doesn’t come home until she’s helped the Batman take down a Flesh Monster that was haunting a butcher’s in Gotham Village, able to attribute the shakiness she’s feeling to adrenaline and not a bunch of numbers.

* * *

Her father’s numbers turn into patterns, but not  _ her _ patterns, not patterns that slot easily into place and allow her to make leaps of logic. They’re not patterns like patterns should be. They’re confusing and fractured and they make her queasy just by looking at them. The first time she pieces together a full page of them (and she’d known it was a bad idea, she just couldn’t  _ stop _ ), she has to run to the bathroom to throw up. 

Her father finds her curled over the toilet bowl, and runs a sympathetic hand through her hair. “Let’s get you to bed,” he tells her, once she’s done. “I’ll get you some water, and a bucket. Do you need me to stay home with you tonight?”   
She snorts. “I’m a grown woman, Dad, it’s fine,” she tells him. “Go to work.”

He nods. “I worry about you, is all, Babs,” he says. “I can’t help it.” 

She lets him help her to bed. Doesn’t remember the sheet of patterns on her desk until he suddenly sees it and goes pale.

“Where did you get this?” he asks, snatching it up from the desk. Babs doesn’t know how to reply.

“I– I found it, I was just curious–”

“No,” he shakes his head, eyes wide and afraid. “No, you can’t. You  _ can’t _ . Don’t touch these, Barbara, I’m serious.”

And all Babs can do is nod and say, “I won’t.” 

He nods, folding the paper and tucking it into his pocket. He’s muttering under his breath again, movements shaky and erratic. He turns and leaves, and Babs catches a snatch of what he’s saying as he closes the door.

“Not my daughter,” he mutters. “Not her, you can’t take her too, not my girl.”

She lies in bed, feeling nauseous and drained and afraid, and wonders just what she’s getting into.

* * *

“Barbara,” her father says, one day, unprompted, “I think I’m going insane.”

And that is, somehow, the last piece in the puzzle of equations and bad-patterns and fractals. Knowledge of this new Entity comes into her mind unbidden, and she feels cold.

“Dad,” she says, and stops, because she doesn’t know what to say in the face of sudden realisation. He jerks, as if he hadn’t realised what he’d said, and shakes his head.

“Forget I said anything,” he tells her, but she can’t. She  _ can’t _ . She forces herself to sit still for several minutes before excusing herself, and rushes to her bedroom, heart hammering, and pulls out her board.

She’s filled twelve of the fourteen spots on the board. She adds another, hands shaking.

_ The Spiral. Fear of going mad. _

* * *

“They’re coming for my dad,” she tells Batman and Dick, later that night. “The entities.”

“Which one?” Dick asks. 

“The Spiral.”   
The two of them exchange a glance, eyes wide. Babs doesn’t like the expressions on their faces.

“Has it manifested yet?” Batman asks her. She shakes her head.

“I don’t think so. He’s just– losing it, a little.” She laughs, humourless. “He’s erratic. Frantic. Keeps drawing fractals.”

Another exchanged glance. Dick bites his lip. 

“If something shows up, call us,” Batman tells her. “You have Dick’s number. We’ll be keeping an eye out.”

And Babs nods. “Thank you,” she says, but it does nothing to assure her, nothing to sway her fears. Because– what if it strikes when her dad is alone? What if, by the time Batman arrives, he’s too late? What if, after years of saving the innocents of the city from Monsters and Avatars, Babs can’t even save her own father?

* * *

So Babs isn’t expecting the Spiral to just… knock on the door. 

She’s not sure what she was expecting when she opened it, but it wasn’t this: a man, tall and pale and spindly, so clearly an Avatar and so far gone that even calling him a man is a stretch. He’s smiling, too-wide and blood red, with glowing eyes and a shock of bright green hair that makes her stomach lurch to look at. He’s wearing a bad-patterned shirt that spins and cartwheels before her eyes, and the moment she lays eyes on him, freezing up, he laughs, and the sound makes colours burst behind her eyes, the worst migraine she’s ever had brought on in a number of nanoseconds. 

She gasps, reaching for her forehead, stumbling back, and the man takes a step forward, teeth shining so brightly they’re blinding, and reaches a hand forward. It looks, all things considered, like a normal person’s hand, except when it pushes into her abdomen it feels like knives, feels like  _ fire _ , feels like her insides twisting and melting together and she screams in raw agony before he throws her to the floor and her father cries out in alarm. 

The world bursts into colour and movement and laughter and screams, vertigo-inducing and painful. She can’t make sense of  _ anything _ , can’t tell what’s up and what’s down, feels like she’s floating in space but also like she’s been buried alive. She thinks she might be crying. She thinks she can hear her father screaming. She can  _ definitely _ hear the monster laughing. She scrambles on the ground, in agony, her legs a dead weight behind her, and oh, doesn’t  _ that _ flood her with cold panic, but she can’t think about that now, she needs… she needs…

What does she need?

She lies in suspended animation, watching colours burst and bend and deconstruct themselves. The room dissolves into spirals and fractals and she looks for patterns in them and can’t find them. Everything aches. There’s something she needs to do. She  _ knows _ there’s something she needs to do. Knows that there is something very wrong with this place, but she can’t put her finger on what.

And this has always been Babs’ problem: she can  _ know _ , but she cannot  _ understand _ . 

The world spirals further into nonsense. Babs spirals with it. Her eyes drift closed. 

She needs to do something. It can’t be important. What’s important? She’s sure that’s a concept she’s familiar with, but it’s… it’s… 

Her father screams, and her eyes snap open, panic and terror filling her.

He’s in danger. She’s just caught in the crossfire, but he might die here, tonight, if she can’t… 

_ Call Dick.  _ That’s what Batman had told her to do. She drags herself across… the floor? The floor, scrabbling until her fingers find her phone, and she scrolls through her contacts until the letters resolve themselves into words and those words gain meaning as names, and then finally selects the right one.

It’s been too long. Her father is still screaming. She hopes this is enough.

“Dick?” she calls, when the call goes through. Her voice sounds strange to her ears, distant, far away, reverberating with some quality she can’t describe. “It’s– it’s happening.” Because she doesn’t know what else this is, other than  _ happening _ . 

She hears him curse on the other ends. “Barbara? Babs? Where are you?”   
Where  _ is _ she? “Home,” she grinds out. “Hurry.” And then the colours are too much and the bad-patterns are screaming lies at her and her everything  _ hurts _ and she screams, and screams, and screams, and all the while the Spiral man laughs.

* * *

There’s no physical damage.

Of course there isn’t, she thinks dully, because why  _ would _ there be? An Avatar of the eldritch personification of madness had put his hand  _ through _ her, and there’s nothing there. Nothing there, but she still can’t feel her legs, can’t move them. It’s neurological, they tell her, some disconnect in the brain. They can’t fix it. Of course they can’t.

She can’t feel her _legs_ because a hand through her _abdomen_ had fucked up her _brain_ , and she should have _known_ who was behind the door, because she _always_ knew who was behind the door, because she knew how to read the patterns, and the fact that she hadn’t should have been a major warning. And she had opened the door. And now her dad is a nervous wreck, and her legs don’t work, and her friends keep giving her these _pitying_ _looks_ , like she needs their pity.

She doesn’t. What she needs is to  _ know _ . To never be caught off guard again. The Spiral had been her blind spot, their patterns had interfered in her own, so next time, she would Know better. She’ll spot the signs. She won’t ever let herself be victimised again.

_ There are three types of humans in this world _ , Bruce had told her, once.  _ Bystanders. Avatars. And Victims _ . 

Barbara has  _ never _ been a bystander. She refuses to be a victim.

That leaves one option.

* * *

The final puzzle piece slots into place.

* * *

Some Avatars, she knows, gets titles.  _ The Archivist. The Batman. The Demon’s Head _ . Apt descriptions of what they are, of what they mean to their patron, to the people they make Victims.

They call her the Oracle. She Knows things. She can find you, no matter where you are, no matter where  _ she _ is. She can predict your next move, be in position to stop it before its even crossed your mind. It’s not omniscience, or even precognition, it’s just patterns, and probability, and Babs has been practicing for this her whole life, she just never knew it.

She thinks she should be scared, of what she’s becoming. Dick and Bruce both tell her that she should be.

“If it weren’t for B, I’d be no different from any other Stranger,” Dick tells her. “If it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t be any different from any other Hunter. It’s our fear of what we are that keeps us human. You need to hold onto that.”

But how can she be afraid, when she’s seen the alternative, and knows that it’s so much worse? 

But she Knows that he’s right, even if she doesn’t  _ understand _ , so she forces herself to pay attention to the fear in her victims’ faces before she drags them off to the Warden. She replays them to herself, every night before she falls asleep. She then tries imagination, picturing Dick, afraid of her.  _ Bruce _ , afraid of her.  _ Her father, afraid of her _ .

And it’s that last one that strikes dread into her soul, that makes her hesitant to dive headfirst into the Eye’s promises of safety. She’ll die before she lets that happen.

She Knows that is what will keep her safe. She doesn’t understand  _ why _ . 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's chapter title was taken from earth: "i bend the definition / of faith to exonerate my blind eye / 'til the sirens sound, i'm safe" 
> 
> oh, and if you wanna hmu on tumblr, i'm @fliipclaw, and my dc/batfam blog is @bullyingbatman


	4. temporary brilliance turns to ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason is always bright, and he is always burning, thrumming with an intensity that dances beneath his skin. It makes his smiles wide, his laughs full, his sobs wracking, his yells thunderous. He finds it hard to keep a lid on it, and even harder to explain, because how does he explain to someone like Bruce that when he feels, he feels so strongly that it hurts, burns the underlayer of his skin, fills his nose with the scent of charring flesh? How does he explain that this is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a Jason thing, and it’s saved his life more times than he can count?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was a NIGHTMARE. i reworked the middle section so many times. 
> 
> chapter warnings: child death, animal death, child abuse, violence, burning, torture, manipulation, unreality, spiral bs and joker bs (they go hand in hand in this 'verse)
> 
> ....yeah, this one's a doozy. buckle up.

Jason is bright.

Bright as in clever, bright as in cheerful, bright as in Gotham’s dazzling city lights, bright as in a forest fire. He is bright, and warm, and he burns with it. He burns with everything. He burns with anger at his father, with love for his mother, with desperation and need and  _ want _ . He grows up surrounded with dim lights and dingy alleys and dirty floors, grows up with the weight of a city that doesn’t deserve him pressing down on his chest, and he burns with a fierce light of determination that keeps him warm. 

He’s on the streets before he turns ten. It is a cruel, unfair life, and he is hardened by it, jaded, but he is not cruel, and he is not unfair. He’s not the youngest kid on the streets, and he doesn’t share with the little ones– he can’t afford it, even if he wanted to– but he lets them sit by him, lets them curl up an arm’s reach away when he settles down for the night. They’re not always there, but they are sometimes, especially in the winter, when they seem to seek him out.

“You always find the warmest places to sleep,” a boy, no older than seven, tells him. “Dunno how you do it. I just always know that when I’m with you, I’m not gonna freeze.” 

He sees them sometimes, the ones who can’t find warm places to sleep. They always make him pause, his eyes lingering on their small bodies, frozen in time, perfectly still. They’re so young, and now, they’ll always  _ be _ young. 

He feels the weight, heavy on his chest, and forces himself to walk on.

* * *

When he is five years old, his dog dies.

He loved that dog. When his parents would stay up at night screaming at each other, filling their small apartment with too much noise to sleep, he would crawl under the table with her. She would whine, pressing against him, and he would wrap his arms around her, press his face into her fur, and try not to listen to the angry accusations and stinging insults. 

She dies. It’s not a pleasant death, to old age or even illness; the cheap food they’d bought her had been laced with something, and she seizes violently for hours before finally passing on. Jason crouches over her the entire time, whispering platitudes, begging his mother to help her, please, but his mother simply turns away, pursing her lips. Jason knows that they cannot afford the vet, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. 

When she is finally gone, he buries his face in her fur, and cries. His mother takes pity on him, pulls him away, into her arms, whispers soothing words into his hair. 

“I’m sorry, baby,” she tells him. “I’m sorry, but you can’t cry now. We need to take her outside before your father gets home. Can you help me with that? There you go. There’s my strong boy.”

There’s nothing but hard concrete in Crime Alley, so they have to wrap her body in a trash bag, and put it in the large dumpster out back. Jason stares up at it, and says a silent goodbye to his first and oldest friend.

It is the first time he experiences loss. Grief. It, too, burns him.

* * *

Jason is bright, and he thinks that is why the Batman finds him, hidden in the shadows of Crime Alley. 

He’d heard of the Batman, of course, the urban legend spoke of in only whispers, the monstrous man-bat who hunts monsters and criminals, never to be seen again. He hadn’t thought that the Batman was real. Never considered the idea that he’d see it.

But, looking up at him, Jason doesn’t feel afraid, not like he’s supposed to. He just brandishes the tire iron, like it could protect him from the monster made of darkness that’s staring into his soul.

“Are you going to put those tyres back?” Batman asks. Jason scoffs.

“Why? You gonna kill me if I don’t?”   
The Batman stiffens at that. “I don’t kill. And I don’t hurt children,” he says, stilted, after a moment. “I would just appreciate it if you could put those back on.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “What does it matter to you? Don’t you have something better to do?”   
“It’s just that I like this car. And I’d really not rather leave it here overnight.”   
And Jason– blinks. Because.  _ What?  _

“This is your car?” he asks. The Batman nods. “You have a car?”

“I don’t see why this is so surprising.”

“You’re the Batman? Night-stalking, crime-fighting cryptid? You’re  _ literally _ wearing a cloak made of pure darkness, and you own a  _ car _ .” 

He can’t see the Batman’s face through the gloom that shrouds him, but he thinks the man is laughing at him. He scowls.

“What’s your name?” the Batman asks him.

“Jason,” Jason replies, after a moment. 

“Jason,” the Batman repeats. “Well. I have one question for you, Jason.”

“Will I put your tyres back?”   
Batman actually laughs at that, and Jason doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that he just made  _ the Batman _ laugh. Doesn’t know how to deal with this whole conversation, actually. 

“Well, that too, but I was actually going to ask: are you hungry?”

And– yeah, he kind of is. 

* * *

The Batman takes him out for burgers. The Batman drives him home in his fancy car, to his fancy mansion, where he gives him a whole suite and lets him stay the night. And then that night turns into two, turns into three, turns into several, and then he just  _ lives _ there. With the Batman. 

What is his life?

Bruce– because  _ Bruce Wayne _ is the  _ Batman _ , and trying to figure out how  _ that _ works just makes Jason’s head spin– does some paperwork, pulls some strings, and probably pays some people a lot of hush money, and then Jason is officially, legally, his foster child. He goes to school, attends galas, listens to people whisper about his  _ heritage _ and  _ upbringing _ and tries not to let his anger show. He hangs out with Alfred, learns how to cook, spends long, rainy afternoons lounging in the library, head in a book.

Wayne Manor is warmth and comfort and light, and it’s hard to reconcile that with the knowledge of the darkness that it hides. 

* * *

“I want to come on a Hunt,” Jason tells Bruce, one day, as he sits in the cave and watches Bruce adorn his shroud. 

“You’re too young,” is what Bruce tells him.

“I’m  _ twelve _ . You let Dick go hunting when he was younger than me.”

“Dick was an Avatar. You, on the other hand, could get hurt.” Jason scoffs.

“I was perfectly fine out there on the streets,” he says. “C’mon, B, please. I know you and Dick aren’t talking, and you’re going out there  _ alone _ , and you need someone to watch your back. You need _ me _ . Please.” 

Bruce sighs. “You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?” he asks. Jason raises an eyebrow. “Fine. But there are  _ rules _ .” 

Jason beams.

* * *

Jason is always bright, and he is always burning, thrumming with an intensity that dances beneath his skin. It makes his smiles wide, his laughs full, his sobs wracking, his yells thunderous. He finds it hard to keep a lid on it, and even harder to explain, because how does he explain to someone like  _ Bruce _ that when he feels, he feels so strongly that it hurts, burns the underlayer of his skin, fills his nose with the scent of charring flesh? How does he explain that this is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a  _ Jason _ thing, and it’s saved his life more times than he can count?

How can he explain, when he loses his temper on Hunts, when he throws himself into the fray of battle and then cannot stop, even when the monster they’re after is bloody and begging on the ground, that it isn’t recklessness, or cruelty, or even rage, it’s that when they’re hunting, the light inside of him goes  _ supernova _ , and if he doesn’t hurt something, it’ll burn him up from the inside out? 

Then he catches the way Bruce looks at him, the morning after one of their screaming arguments about Jason being _ too violent _ and  _ going too far _ , sees the deep sadness and wary fear in his eyes, and he thinks that maybe Bruce understands more than he’s letting on.

* * *

“You know,” Bruce says, one day, when they’re spending a quiet morning together in the library, “When I first met Dick, I was like you. Violent. Unrestrained. I went too far in my hunts, every time.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “You’ve told me this story before, old man,” he says. “Dick made you realise that killing people was wrong, blah blah, you started sending your victims to be eternally tortured by the Buried instead.”

Bruce frowns. “I bring it up,” he says, ignoring him, “Because I know you’ve been struggling with the same thing. And I want you to know that I understand.”

“Do you?” Jason’s mouth twists. “Because if you understood, you’d understand that it’s not that easy.” 

Bruce shakes his head. “It almost killed me,” he says. “To stop killing. To strike an alliance with the Buried. Ask Dick about it, if you want. Or Alfred. They’ll tell you about the state I was in, the constant illness, the constant weakness. It wasn’t easy. Without the two of them, I doubt I would have made it.”

Jason scoffs. “So, what, I’m just supposed to… make myself sick? Risk dying? Just because  _ you _ did it?” 

“I’m worried about you, is all,” Bruce says. “You’re not one of us, not really. You still have a choice to make. You have people you can rely on. I don’t want you to become something you can’t take back.”

Jason decides he’s had enough of this, gets to his feet. “See ya, old man,” he says, making his way to the door. “Thanks for the talk. It was great, really; we should do this again sometime.” He slams it shut behind him, and wonders if he’d laid on the contempt too thick. But then again, Bruce is dense enough at the best of times. He probably needs it to catch the hint.

He doesn’t broach the subject again, at least, and that’s enough for Jason.

* * *

Dick is angry at Bruce. He’s been angry at Bruce ever since Jason came into the picture– Bruce says he was angry before that, too. And because Dick is angry, he Hunts alone more often than not, only teaming up with them when absolutely necessary.

More often, he hunts with Barbara– Babs, they call her, the commissioner’s daughter. Bruce says that Babs is like him– human, but Marked, and that by working with them, they keep her safe from the Entity that wants to claim her.

Jason wonders, sometimes, about the Entity that’s chosen him, what it wants. Bruce tells him not to worry about it, because the Pack will keep him safe, but Jason isn’t too sure.

Because Bruce is distracted, and Dick is angry, and because Dick is angry, Babs is standoffish. There’s Alfred, of course, and he’s great, but he doesn’t come out onto the streets with them at night. He manages to escape the front lines of this war against fear the Pack is waging, and while he cares for them a great deal, he is not one of them. Not Marked, the way the rest of them are.

Bruce tells him he has people to rely on, but he’s not sure he does, not really. Because Bruce says  _ you’re going too far _ , and Dick says  _ I don’t want to deal with this _ , and Babs says  _ you’ll never be Dick Grayson _ , and Alfred says  _ let’s not dwell on the negatives _ , and Jason doesn’t  _ have _ anyone else. 

He lives in a mansion, but some days, he feels like he doesn’t have  _ anything _ .

* * *

The Spiral comes for Commissioner Gordon. The Spiral gets Babs.

“They’re planning a ritual,” Batman tells them. “I’m not sure how it works, exactly, but I’ve been in contact with the Archivist, and it looks like they’re conducting several, small-scale rituals simultaneously, building up a net of power across the world. The Avatar that went after the Gordons– the Joker– was chosen to carry out the ritual here in Gotham. The good news is that if we stop him, we topple the whole global network, and the ritual fails.”

“How do we do that?” Dick asks. He’s tense, limbs coiled.

“There’s a reason the Joker went after Gordon. The Spiral’s ritual involves taking a victim, and using them as fuel. We prevented him from taking Gordon to the ritual site, but that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. We need to keep an eye out, and prevent him from snatching somebody else.” Glowing white eyes stare out from the mass of darkness that is the Batman, serious. “I need you both to be careful. Stay close, stay in communication. Don’t go off alone.”

* * *

Jason doesn’t go off alone.

He’s waiting in an alleyway while Batman does recon in the building he’s leaning up against, when a door across the way opens and a woman stumbles out. Later, Jason won’t be able to recall anything about how she looked in that moment, other than her short brown hair and familiar face.

“Mom?” he calls, uncertain, and she freezes. She turns to him, eyes wide, and then glistening with tears, as she raises a hand to her mouth. 

“Oh, my god,” she breathes. “Jason?”   
“Mom!” Jason runs over to her, crashes into her arms. She pulls him close. “You’re alive,” he says, voice thick. “How are you alive? I watched you die.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” she says, gentle as anything. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you sometime. But right now, I–” She glances back over her shoulder, and Jason realises that she looks dishevelled.

“What is it Mom? Are you in danger?”   
She shakes her head. “It’s nothing, we should go–”   
“If you’re in trouble, Mom, I can help. I work with the Batman, see, so I can–”

“You work with the Batman?” Catherine goes still, her gaze searching. Jason nods.

“He’s not just a bedtime story, Mom, he’s real, and I help him fight monsters. If there’s anyone who can help you, it’s me.”

And she nods, hesitantly, brushing a stray lock of hair out of his face. “Okay,” she says, slowly, unsurely. There’s a quality in her voice that he can’t quite put his finger on, that makes his ears ring. “Okay. Come with me.”

She takes him by the hand, leading him out of the alleyway and down a confusing, complicated network of side streets that he hadn’t been aware was even  _ there _ . As he walks, he starts to get nervous, because he didn’t get chance to tell B where he was going before Catherine had dragged him away, but he’s sure Bruce will understand. It’s his  _ mother _ . 

They arrive at a warehouse. It’s cold, colder than it had been in the alleyway, and he wonders why, because it’s summer in Gotham. He thinks, in the dark, he can see looming shapes above the warehouse, like mountain peaks, but he assumes that it’s just his eyes trying to invent something that isn’t there to make sense of the lack of input. 

Catherine opens the door, and gestures at him to enter. He pushes aside his misgivings, and strides inside.

There’s a man. He’s tall and spindly and pale, skin pure white like tissue paper. His hair is such a garish shade of neon green that it makes Jason’s eyes water to look at him. His mouth is wide and smiling and red, and Jason can taste the blood on his lips. He laughs, and the world around Jason begins to fray at the edges.

Alarmed, Jason turns around. “Mom?” he calls, but the woman he sees isn’t his mother. She’s blonde, for one, and her silhouette is all wrong. Her eyes make Jason feel like he’s falling. 

The strange woman smiles. “What is it, son?” she asks, and she even sounds different. Jason stumbles back, away from her, and into the arms of the Joker.

“Thank you for escorting our guest of honour, Miss Haywood!” the Joker crows, and Jason feels the world lurch and tilt sideways. He’d stumble, but the Joker’s grip on him is too tight. “Will you be staying for the show?”   
“How could I refuse a front row seat?” Miss Haywood replies, her voice making nausea well within Jason. The room is spinning now, and he knows he needs to fight, to get out of the Joker’s hold, but every time he goes to grab his arms he misses, and they’re somewhere completely different to where they thought he was.

_ Your eyes are lying to you _ , something ancient and twisting whispers in his mind.  _ Your perceptions cannot be trusted _ . 

Jason kicks out. He hits empty air. The Joker is on the other side of the room, but Jason is still in his arms. Jason doesn’t understand.

“Now, now, Boy Wonder,” the Joker says, and Jason is upside down, now, he’s floating and flying and falling all at once, and he’d vomit but his stomach has twisted itself shut. “Don’t be like that. We have a show to put on! I’ve written the script, all you have to do is say your lines.” 

* * *

He’s breathing laughter instead of air. He’s not breathing. He’s drunk on oxygen. He wants to cry out, to beg for help, to scream Bruce’s name and hope that Batman will save him, but he can’t tell voice from thought or figure out how to control either of them. He might be crying, but it’s equally likely that someone is pouring acid over his eyes and down his face. 

Jason shatters. The world is fractures, mirror-shards, reflecting his own face back at him, made of spirals. Everything is bright and neon and multicoloured and painful, and he wants to close his eyes but he thinks they might already be closed, thinks that might not change anything because this is not a fault of his eyes but a fault of his mind, cut open and pulled apart and twisting, twisting, evermore.

He wants it to stop. He wants it to end. He wants to  _ know _ , not just think, not just attempt to piece together his broken perceptions with the frenzied desperation of a man attempting to glue the grains of sand on a beach back into stone. He wants his dad to come and save him, but if there is one thing he is sure of, it’s that Bruce isn’t coming.

* * *

See, the thing is. The thing  _ is _ , is that Jason has always burned bright.  _ Too _ bright. The thing that dogs his heels, that calls for him, that hums beneath his skin, it’s attracted to his heat, to his warmth, but it shies away from the light. It is anathema to it. 

But here, in this technicolour nightmare, where the only thing he knows is that nothing he’s experiencing is real, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting him, that thing finds purchase. 

_ Accept me _ , it whispers.  _ Destroy yourself _ . And Jason, caught in the agony of a thousand shards of reality piercing into his very soul, has no reason to say no.

So he burns, and he burns, and the Joker’s laughs turn into screams, and the warehouse explodes in smoke and white-hot debris, but there is no fire to be seen.

And Jason is  _ hot _ and  _ angry _ and  _ burning _ but he is not  _ bright _ , anymore. His flame is Lightless as he stands in the wreckage of the warehouse, of his life, and surveys the destruction, and laughs, skin melting like wax to the floor.

* * *

It’s not Batman, who finds him in the ruins of the ritual. It’s not Dick, or even the cops. It’s Talia al Ghul, he’s not sure how she knew to find him, or even that he needed to be found. 

She spirits him away, away from the wreckage of his life, of his mind, to somewhere they won’t be found, and she does not flinch away from the burns his touch leaves on her skin. She sits him down, and puts his broken psyche back together, piece by piece, spider silk wrapped around broken glass.

“You’re doing it wrong,” he tells her, wincing at the sensation.

“Hush,” she says.

“That doesn’t go there,” he says again.

“Quiet, now, Jason. Let me work.”

He lets her work. She puts him back together wrong, but by the end of it, he doesn’t even care. He thinks, distantly, that that’s maybe the point, that she’s purposefully organised the pieces to make him compliant. He thinks that should maybe make him panic, that in another life, he would have tried harder to stop her.

This is not that life. 

* * *

Talia sends him to train with teachers. He does not resist. Some of them are Avatars, others simply Marked, and they teach him with glee how to destroy.

When he is done, and has learned all they can teach, he destroys them too. It soothes the burning under his skin. Talia tuts, but sends him on to the next one, anyway. 

* * *

In the wake of the explosion, he feels a hunger, a need. It settles deep inside of him, in the inky dark void left behind by his brightness, and it  _ craves _ . It craves destruction and violence; it begs him to tear the people around him apart, to take their lives apart piece by piece until they have nothing  _ but _ their lives, until they don’t even want those, but can’t give them away. 

He  _ hates _ it. He thinks of Bruce, thinks of,  _ I don’t want you to become something you can’t take back _ , and he hates him too, hates him for being right, hates him for not being enough, hates him for not saving him. Hates him for, apparently, forgetting Jason existed the moment he left the wreckage of the warehouse behind. He’s got another kid in his Pack now. He’s caught the Joker, several times, but hasn’t done  _ anything _ to punish him, and when will it be enough? 

Is it not enough that he took away Babs’ safety, Gordon’s sanity, Jason’s light? Is it not enough that thanks to the Joker, he and Babs will never be human again, forced to live a half-life of obsession and hunger and fear? Is it not enough that he shows up once every couple of months, terrorises the innocent of Gotham with his Spiral torture  _ bullshit _ , and gets away every time?  _ Is it not enough? _

He is angry, and he is hungry, and he thinks that once, he loved Bruce, but now he doesn’t know how to love, because that was burned out of him, too. He thinks Bruce should get the chance to  _ truly _ understand all those things he never  _ got _ about Jason. About the world. About having everything you love taken from you, one at a time, until your very soul crumbles and the shadow left in its wake cries out in agony for retribution.

He thinks that Bruce should burn out, too. 

* * *

Talia doesn’t want him to target Bruce. It’s the first time he disobeys her, returning to Gotham. Something in his mind aches at it, but he pushes past the pain of it, more than accustomed to the feeling. 

He sets a bomb. He doesn’t trigger it. He drops the detonator into the river.

He Hunts, or is it hunts, now, that he no longer has a Hunter, claiming him as part of a pack? He picks out his marks, torments them, takes from them, and finally, corners them and ends it. 

If they beg, he lets them live, just barely. Makes sure that every breath they take will be agony until they take their own lives, or someone else decides to take mercy on them instead.

The Pack have noticed him, he knows. He’s causing too much trouble for them not to. 

* * *

He corners the kid, the new one, the one made of smoke and mirrors, and he knows that the replacement could easily get away from him, but he doesn’t. He’s like Bruce, in that way, all bleeding-heart empathy, and Jason can’t stand it.

“Jason,” the kid pleads. “You don’t have to do this. We can help you.”

Jason laughs, razor sharp. “Sure, you can help me, Replacement,” he says. “Your corpse will make a great present for Batsy darest, don’t you think?” 

He reaches forward, to place a burning-hot hand on the kid’s face, but the kid grabs his wrist, holds him there. “Please,” he says. “We don’t want to hurt you. And I know, deep down, you don’t want to hurt us.”

“You have no idea what I want.”

He darts his other hand forward, pushes it against the kid’s chest, and he lets out a pained, strangled scream as the scent of burning flesh fills the room. He drops Jason’s hand, sinking to the floor, and Jason steps up to rain hell down upon the boy–

And then he is alone, in a world full of mist, and he feels cold as he realises what just happened.

“No!” he screams. “No! You can’t do this to me!”

But there is no reply. In the Lonely, no one can hear you scream.

* * *

Jason drifts. The Lonely is not the Spiral but it is not much better. He feels cold, and empty, and he can’t keep his thoughts. They slip away from him with the rushing of the tide. He walks along the beach, lies in the sand, breathes in and out. 

He needs to think. He needs to get out of here. He needs to find Talia. 

He doesn’t get any of these things. All Jason has is the crushing force of overwhelming loneliness, and he preferred it when he’d had nothing.

* * *

After what could have been hours or could have been an eternity, the kid returns. Bruce is with them. Jason feels a spark of anger at that, but it is distant, muted. It is too cold here for him to burn.

“Jason,” Bruce says, and he sounds broken, though Jason has no idea  _ why _ . He has nothing to be broken about. Jason failed. “Jay, lad.”

Jason stares with foggy eyes, and says nothing.

“Where have you been?” Bruce asks, when it’s apparent Jason isn’t going to say anything. “Why didn’t you come home?”

Jason’s numb lips manage to form the words. “I want to hurt you.”

“Why?” the kid asks, and Jason had forgotten he was here, for a moment. He’s ephemeral, hard to distinguish from the fog that follows him. 

Jason shakes his head, trying to think, to conjure up a satisfactory answer to that question. “I burn,” is all he can manage, in the end. It is so hard to think. “I burn, and so everything else needs to burn, too. And I hate you.”

“Jay.” Bruce reaches out to him. “I’m sorry I didn’t save you. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it in time.”   
Jason shakes his head. “No,” he says, distressed, because that’s  _ wrong _ . “No. I don’t care that you didn’t save me. I forgive you for that.”   
Bruce and the kid both seem confused. “Then why?” Bruce asks.

“You didn’t Hunt the Joker,” Jason replies, and he hates how hurt he sounds. “You let him hurt others, after what he did to me. And then you just replaced me, as soon as I was gone. You didn’t care. You never cared.”

He wants to be angry, to fight, to hurt, to burn, but it is too cold here. He feels distant as Bruce pulls him into his arms.

“No, Jay, no,” his former father says, voice thick with tears. “I care. I care so much. Losing you, it broke me. I lost control. Tim pulled me back. He saved me.” He pulls back, reaches out a hand. “Let us save you.”   
Jason shakes his head. “I’m lost, B. I can’t be saved.”

“Let us try,” the kid says, face earnest. Jason wants to hate him for it, but he can’t. He knows it’s the Lonely, dampening his emotions, but he feels a brief flicker of hope that maybe there’s something in him that isn’t hard and hot and angry. That maybe there’s some trace of humanity, beneath the Desolation and spider-silk and shattered glass. 

“Come home, son,” Bruce says.

Jason takes his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's chapter title is from in the embers, the entirety of which feels very relevant to jason's journey here. the lyric in context: "like fireworks / we pull apart the dark / compete against the stars / with all of our hearts / 'til our temporary brilliance turns to ash / we pull apart the darkness while we can"
> 
> next chapter: tim!


	5. escape the smell of smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He goes through his days in a haze. He constantly wears headphones, because constant noise is the only way to block out the screams. Sometimes his fingers aren’t there. Sometimes he’s more fog than person. When he opens his mouth to speak, only smoke comes out.
> 
> Sometimes people try to talk to him, people at school or on the streets. He tries not to talk back to them. When he does, they tend to disappear, too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy, it's another "i didn't sleep and got up at 7am to write this" chapter
> 
> today's warnings: isolation, dissociation, child neglect, violence, violence towards children, references to death, distress, spiders.

His childhood home is full of fog.

He wanders through the empty halls, rubbing his eyes. It’s particularly bad today, he thinks. On good days, the fog is no more than ankle-height, and he can think clearly– maybe his mind wanders more than is ordinary, but what would he know about that? But on bad days, days like today, it is hard to think, his mind full of fog, and he finds not just his thoughts but his memories slipping away from him– who is he? Where is he? What is he doing here? Where is he going? What is his name? He’s sure he has one, but he’s not sure he can recall it.

There are other people in the house sometimes. He remembers this– the housekeeper, he thinks, and his– his parents? He has parents, he’s sure. He’s not sure where they are. They should probably be here, he thinks, because he’s a kid, and kids are meant to have parents. All he has is the fog. 

He used to have nannies, he remembers vaguely, but they kept quitting, or being sent away. He’s not sure if he minds that they’re not here any more. The bad days aren’t as bad when there are other people around, but most of the nannies hadn’t believed him when he told them that he couldn’t focus because of the fog, and those that did had become distressed, and had handed their notices in before too long. 

The manor is empty, its rooms too-large and echoing. He can barely see a foot in front of him. The fog seeps into his bones, though his skin, leaves him shivering and cold, and he wraps his arms around himself in an empty mockery of a hug. He tries to think, but his thoughts fall through his fingers like smoke. He’s meant to be doing something, he’s sure, but he can’t remember what. He can’t even remember his own  _ name _ .

How pathetic is that?

* * *

It starts on a good day, after a long string of bad days, an experience that always feels like coming up for air and suddenly realising that you’d been drowning. He feels relief, but also panic, because it happened  _ again _ , the fog came and took him to that far-off place where he cannot think or feel, and he runs out into the garden and stands in the rain, feeling it on his skin, and says his name over and over again. “Tim Tim Tim Tim  _ Tim _ ,” he says, desperate, as if repeating it will prevent him from forgetting next time, as if his voice could ever keep away the fog.

He decides that he doesn’t want to stay in the house anymore, doesn’t want to sleep in case he wakes up and can’t think anymore, and so he stuffs a bag with snacks and a couple days’ worth of clothes and also the camera that his parents got him two Christmases ago, because it makes him feel loved. He enjoyed photography, and his parents had cared enough not only to pay attention, but to buy him something relevant to his interests. It made him feel warm inside.

Bag packed, he leaves the manor behind him, and makes his way into Gotham proper, as far away from the manor as he can manage. He spends his day weaving through crowds and moving between coffee shops, enjoying the buzz of people around him.

It’s not until the sun is setting and he’s lurking in a dimly lit alleyway that he realises that he has no idea what he’s doing. It’s getting cold, and the streets are emptying, and it dawns on him suddenly that he’s just as alone here as he was back home, and at least there he had a roof over his head and safety from strangers.

He starts to hurry, not-quite-running through the streets, breath coming in hurried gasps. He needs– he needs to get out of the city, but he doesn’t want to go back to the empty house and the fog and the thoughtless haze, and he doesn’t want to stay here, and he has nowhere else to go, and– and– and– 

He sees someone, and stops, suddenly, eyes fixated. There are two figures on a rooftop above him, one a boy several years older than him, and the other a– a man? He’s hard to make out, a dark shape in the darkness surrounding him. Looking at him makes the hairs on the back of Tim’s neck stand up. 

The boy sees him looking at them, and waves, grinning. Hesitantly, Tim waves back. There’s something familiar about the boy, but he can’t put his finger on it. 

He turns and walks down the street, slipping behind a corner where the two figures won’t see him. He glances back and finds that they’re still stood in the same place, now engaged in an intense conversation. He pulls his camera out of his bag almost without thinking about it, and snaps a photo. 

He glances down at the screen to look at what he’s captured, and when he looks back up, the figures are gone. He shoves his camera back into the bag and continues on his way home, nerves inexplicably settled.

* * *

It becomes a habit– on good days, he’ll go into the city, seek out the figures, and photograph them. It doesn’t take him long to figure out that the dark figure he sees is the legendary Batman, Gotham’s local cryptid… crime fighter? Monster hunter? Bump-in-the-night? There are a lot of theories on what the Batman  _ is _ , and no concrete proof that he exists.

Well. Except for Tim’s photos. But he’s not in a rush to share those. He’s not sure why, but they feel precious to him– sacred, almost. Next to his camera, they are his most prized possessions. Maybe it’s because he associates Batman and the boy with his good days and the absence of fog– being around their photos on a bad day usually clears his head, even if just a little. It’s a relief, being able to have something that can make everything clearer, just a little bit.

It takes him a while to identify the boy, though he feels that niggling familiarity in the back of his mind every time he sees him. And it’s not while stalking through the streets that he finally makes the connection, but instead on a good day while his parents are home. He’s been sent to play in the gardens– though he’s not really sure what “playing” means, exactly– and he’s wandering close to the hedge that separates their property from the Wayne’s, when he spots a boy sitting in an apple tree that overhangs the boundary, collecting the fruits and stuffing them into a plastic bag.

He freezes, unsure of what to do, and that’s when the boy spots him and grins. “Hey!” he calls, waving, and,  _ oh _ ,  _ that’s _ where Tim knew him from.

“H-Hi,” he stammers, because what are you meant to say to your neighbour who you just realised was Batman’s boy? 

“Want an apple?” the boy asks, holding one up. Tim frowns.

“I’m pretty sure those are cooking apples,” he says. 

“So bake a pie. That’s what we’re doing.”

“You and… Bruce Wayne?”   
The boy snorts. “Nah, the old man can’t cook to save his life. I don’t think he even knows how to make  _ eggs _ .” There’s a note of disgust in his tone, and Tim decides never to tell the boy that he can’t make eggs, either. “Alfie’s teaching me how to make it. He’s our butler.”

Tim nods. “Right.”

“I’m Jason,” the boy says, after a moment. “You gotta name?”   
“Tim,” Tim says, and it feels weird, giving his name to someone else. He barely even has it himself most days. The idea that he could be wandering around his house, unable to say his own name, and someone  _ else _ would be able to think about him, think about  _ Tim _ , fills him with a profound feeling he can’t name.

“Nice to meet ya, Tim,” Jason says. “So… apple?”

Tim hesitates, then nods. Jason tosses it to him, and Tim just barely manages to save his fumbled catch, grabbing it with his fingertips. Jason grins.

“I think I’ve got enough, gotta get back to Alfie,” he says. “Enjoy your apple, Timmy!”

Tim scowls, because he hates it when people call him that, but Jason is dropping down from the tree and running away before Tim can correct him. Oh, well. He’ll just tell him next time. 

He looks down at the apple in his hands, and feels warm. 

When he gets back into the house, his parents are in a rush.  _ A call came in _ , they tell him.  _ We have to get back to work. We’ll see you in two months _ .

And Tim thinks,  _ oh, okay _ , and says,  _ goodbye, have a safe trip _ , and watches the door swing shut behind them.

* * *

The next time the fog lifts, the apple has gone rotten, and Jason Todd is dead.

* * *

He still follows the Batman. That’s how he notices something is wrong– because Batman, in the entire time Tim’s been following him, has not killed anyone, has not done more than maimed, has, despite all difficulties, dragged his victims to a perpetually-open grave in Gotham Cemetery and thrown them in, and there must be something supernatural, because none of them have ever come out of that hole.

But lately, Batman’s Hunts have become kills, have become eviscerations, and Tim isn’t ashamed to admit that he’s scared, because the Batman is  _ terrifying _ . He’s animalistic and feral and made of pure, inky darkness, and Tim decides he doesn’t want photos of this Batman, because they’d surely come to life in the night and eat him, too.

He almost wants to stop following the– man? Monster? But nighttime is always the  _ worst _ , and at least the Batman doesn’t make him forget his own name.

* * *

One night, Batman catches one of the man-monsters, a tall, spindly thing with green hair and a laugh like a headache. If Batman is normally violent, now he’s  _ savage _ , and the man-monster’s screams make Tim feel like he’s stuck inside of a washing machine on a fast-spinning cycle, and he just– he doesn’t  _ care _ how scary the Batman is, he wants the screaming to  _ stop _ .

And that’s how he ends up diving in front of Batman, grabbing the mutilated monster– who, Tim notices, now that he’s up-close, is covered in patchy burns– and willing him to please, please be quiet. His eyes widen as the fog starts to seep out of his hands, enveloping the monster, and then he fades away in the cloud until there’s nothing there, and Tim just stares, because– what? 

The Batman snarls, and Tim is being pressed against the brick wall of the alley, claws around his neck, and he’s choking, struggling, and oh god, he’s going to die– 

“Why.” The Batman’s voice is deep and growling. Tim swallows.

“The screaming hurt,” he whispers. “I wanted it to stop.”   
And– the Batman stiffens, eyes widening, and he drops Tim in an unceremonious heap, scrambling back to the other side of the alley. Tim clutches at his throat, and the two of them stare at each other, breathing heavy and ragged.

“Oh,  _ god _ ,” the Batman whispers, and he sounds  _ human _ . He sounds afraid. “What have I done?” He’s staring at his hands. Tim’s staring at him. They stand there for minutes on end, suspended in the silence, before Batman seems to remember that he’s there, and snaps his head up to look at him. “I’m– sorry,” he chokes out, and then he’s gone. Tim blinks, and then bursts into tears.

* * *

The next day, the fog stays away, almost like it’s afraid, and Tim takes the opportunity to do something he hasn’t done yet, even though he’s known for a while.

He climbs the hedge, and visits Wayne Manor.

He uses the front door, to be polite. An old man answers it– Alfie, he assumes, the butler Jason had mentioned. “Can I help you?” he asks. 

“I’m Timothy Drake,” Tim says. “I live next door.” The butler raises an eyebrow, and Tim realises that he didn’t come up with a reason to be here, so he just blurts, “I know about Batman.” 

The butler’s eyebrows raise even further at that, and he searches Tim’s face, before sighing. “Well, you’d better come in then, Master Timothy,” he says, gesturing him inside. 

“Thank you, Mr….” Tim trails away, realising he’s not sure what the man’s surname is. The butler just smiles.

“You may call me Alfred, Master Timothy.”

Tim nods. “Okay. Thank you, Alfred.”

Alfred leads him through the manor to a study. Even with the door closed, Tim can hear the voices coming from inside. 

“You should have seen the way he looked at me, Dick,” a voice says, familiar, and Tim’s stomach drops when he realises that it’s Batman. “I attacked him. I never even attacked you, and I just– he was just a kid–”

A sigh. “I didn’t know it had gotten this bad. Why didn’t you call me, B?”

“I didn’t– I didn’t even  _ realise– _ ” 

Alfred knocks on the door. The voices quiet. Alfred opens the door. “We have a guest,” he announces, ushering Tim into the room. Tim glances from Batman– or, Bruce Wayne? He looks so ordinary in the daylight, tired and distressed– to the teenager standing beside the desk, hair ruffled like he’s been running his hands though it, and Tim thinks he recognises him as Bruce’s first adoptee– Richard, he thinks?  _ Dick _ , Bruce had called him, just a second ago.

“It’s you,” Bruce says, after a beat of astonished silence. Tim nods, nervous.

“Timothy Drake, sir. I live next door.”

Bruce’s brow furrows. “You were in Gotham last night.”

“I like to take photos of Batman,” Tim admits. Dick laughs.

“You have photos?” he asks, incredulous. “Seriously?”   
Tim nods. “It– helps. They help.”

Bruce is frowning even harder now, if that’s even possible. “Help with what, Timothy?”

“Tim,” Tim corrects without thinking, then flushes. “I– uh– I mean– they help with the fog.”

“The fog?” Dick is tense now. Tim nods.

“It’s– my house. It’s full of fog. Has been, as long as I can remember. I don’t– I don’t like it. It’s cold. Hard to think. But…” He glances down at his hands. “Last night. The fog came out of me. I go into the city at night, because I want to get away from the fog, but– what if it’s not the house? What if it’s me?”

Bruce’s expression is grim, Dick’s concerned, Alfred’s sorrowful. Tim doesn’t like the look of any of those.

“It almost certainly is you, Master Timothy,” Alfred says at last. Tim sags.

“I don’t want it,” he says. “I don’t  _ like _ it.” And he feels like a child, and the last place he wants to sound like a child is  _ the Batman’s office _ , but he can’t help it. He shivers, pulls his coat around him, even though it’s warm inside Wayne Manor. 

Bruce and Dick seem to be having an intense silent conversation entirely through eye contact and aborted gestures. Finally, Bruce sighs. 

“I can’t help you escape the fog, Tim” he says. “I don’t think there’s anyone in this world who can. But… There may be a way to help you control it. Keep it at bay. Would you like that?”

Tim stares at him, barely breathing, barely able to believe what he’s hearing. “You can– really?”

“It won’t be pleasant. Wherever you end up, you’ll likely end up dealing with something just as insidious as the fog, and it’s– it’s not–”

Dick rolls his eyes. “B, stop it, you’ll scare him away.”   
“Dick, he has to  _ know _ that–”

“I’ll do it,” Tim says, cutting them off, heart hammering in his chest. They both startle.

“You’re sure?” Bruce asks.

“I’m sure,” Tim says, seriously. “I’m tired of forgetting my own name.”

Dick and Bruce exchange a glance. Bruce nods. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. Then, I guess… Welcome to the Pack, Tim.”

* * *

They explain to Tim, about the Lonely, about how it targets people like him, with few social connections and very little love in their lives. Tim opens up, talks about how the fog lingers in the halls of his empty home, how it seeps into him and leaves him with a permanent chill, how it fills his eyes and makes the world feel far away and hazy. How it clouds his mind, steals his thoughts, covers his memories with a layer of dust so thick he can’t get to them. How it settles in his heart, makes all his feelings small and faint and dull. 

Dick pulls him into his arms. “You’re gonna be okay, baby bird,” he says. “We’re not going to let it get to you anymore.”

And– it doesn’t go away. But after he starts spending time at Wayne Manor, it gets  _ better _ . The fog is still there, tugging at his ankles, but it doesn’t climb high enough to make his movements sluggish and his mind slow. It doesn’t smother him as he attempts to sleep, keeping him awake as his drifting off is interrupted by a sudden burst of panic that he can’t breathe.

He feels alive for the first time in his life.

Batman takes him out on his Hunts. The two of them teach him how to fight, but they don’t need to teach him how to dodge, because when anything dangerous comes near him it causes his body to disintegrate into mist. He always reappears minutes later, hyperventilating, panicking because the Lonely is empty and draining and all of his worst fears, and then Dick holds him until he feels warm again.

For the first couple of months after Tim joins them, they drag their victims to Amanda Waller’s grave, sending them to eternal torture at the hands of the Buried. Tim feels kind of bad, but he knows the alternative is brutal murder, so he tries not to let it bother him too much. Then, one day, in the midst of a particularly bad fight, he once again summons the mist to his fingertips and forces the thing they’re fighting to vanish into the Lonely, and an idea occurs to him.

“What if instead of taking them to the grave,” he asks B, later, “We send them to the Lonely?”   
Batman considers it. “It would be easier than taking the trip across town,” he admits. “Okay, we’ll try it. But don’t push yourself, and if there’s something about it that starts to bother you, let us know.”   
Tim nods. “Okay,” he says. “I will.”

* * *

He doesn’t.

And look, Tim knows it’s stupid, Bruce had literally asked him to tell him if something was wrong but Tim– he just  _ can’t _ . Because he’s pretty sure this isn’t how the Lonely’s meant to work, and the idea of telling Bruce that he’s not even good at being an  _ Avatar _ , that the eldritch concept of loneliness had somehow fucked up in choosing him and he can’t even use his powers right, is somehow even more terrifying to him than the fact that he can’t control them. 

He’s read the statements. He knows that once people go into the Lonely, they’re no longer the problem of the one who put them there, unless that Avatar  _ wants _ to make them their problem. And Tim doesn’t. He’d really rather not think of the monsters tucked away in his own little pocket of fog, but they don’t give him a choice. Whenever it’s quiet, he can hear them, their distant screams and cries for help, begging for a way out. When he sleeps, they fill his dreams, reaching for him, agonised in that foggy, distant sort of way he knows all too well. 

He spends a lot of his nights curled up on his side, sobbing, unable to get away from his victims. Whispers,  _ I know, I know it hurts, I’m sorry _ , and  _ I don’t know how to help you _ , and  _ I can’t let you out, it’s too dangerous _ , and _ please, please, please, just be quiet _ . 

They never are.

* * *

He begins, ever so slowly, to unravel.

Time begins to blur. He goes through his days in a haze. He constantly wears headphones, because constant noise is the only way to block out the screams. Sometimes his fingers aren’t there. Sometimes he’s more fog than person. When he opens his mouth to speak, only smoke comes out.

Sometimes people try to talk to him, people at school or on the streets. He tries not to talk back to them. When he does, they tend to disappear, too. 

His parents come home, and dissolve into mist the moment he touches them. He spends an hour crying on the kitchen floor, but when he’s done, he can’t remember why he was crying.

“Tim,” Dick calls to him, through the haze. “C’mon, Tim, come back to us.”

Tim blinks.  _ Who’s Tim? _ he thinks, but doesn’t ask. He knows better, knows what happens to the people he talks to. He thinks he cares about Dick, and he doesn’t want to do that to him. 

Bruce tells him he’s benched. Tim figures that’s probably a good thing. They let him sleep over at the manor, and he has nightmares so bad that he floods the hallways with smoke.

It builds, and builds, and builds, until he’s suffocating under the weight of it, and then– 

He wakes one night from a nightmare, screaming, with the screams of a hundred victims wailing in his ears, and the door flies open as Bruce and Dick rush in, coughing in the thick air of the room. Dick pulls him close, whispers platitudes into his hair, tells him  _ it’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re gonna be okay _ , even while he shoots Bruce a terrified look. 

“You need to let go, Tim,” Bruce tells him, gentle as anything. “Whatever’s been going on with you, you need to tell us, or we won’t be able to help you.”

And Tim wants to, he desperately wants to, he’ll do anything to make this go away, but every time he opens his mouth he chokes on his own insignificance and he can’t– he can’t– 

Something  _ cracks _ deep within him. The screams crescendo, and then there is blessed, blessed silence. Tim gasps, and collapses in Dick’s arms, all the energy draining from him.

“Tim? Tim?” Dick questions, frantic. “What’s wrong with him, B?”

“Tim?” Bruce asks, stroking his damp hair from his forehead. “Tim, can you hear me?”

Tim finds it in him to nod. “They’re gone,” he whispers, his voice more mist than sound, but the meaning seems to make it across. 

“Who’s gone?”

“The ones I trapped,” Tim breathes. “In the Lonely.”

Bruce and Dick stiffen. “They’re out?”

Tim nods again. “They kept… They were screaming, B. I… It hurt.” 

“Oh, Tim,” Bruce whispers, and Dick plants a kiss in his hair.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Dick tells him, gentle. Tim’s eyes flutter closed.

“Think… It’s hungry,” he mumbles. “I… Everything I fed it is gone. ‘S gonna want me now.” Tears seep out from under his eyelids. “I don’t wanna be fog.” 

“We won’t let it,” Dick promises. “That’s not gonna happen, Baby Bird. Just get some sleep.”

Tim melts in his arms, and sleeps peacefully for the first time in months.

* * *

The next few days are hard. Tim is barely-present, keeps slipping into the Lonely, and takes hours to find his way back. It scares Bruce, Dick, and Alfred every time, but he can’t help it. 

“You need to seek sanctuary,” Bruce tells him. “One entity can protect you from another, if you ask it to. I had hoped being a part of the Pack would mean that the Hunt could shield you, but it seems that isn’t the case.”

“I just need to ask?” Tim asks. Bruce nods, somewhat reluctantly.

“You’ll just know, if it’s the right one. But you need to think carefully about what you’re signing your soul away to.”

Tim nods shakily. “I will,” he promises. 

And he does– he spends a long time down in the cave, going through statements when his mind is clear enough to read, listening to the tapes when it’s not. He thinks a lot about what he should choose– should he be a Hunter, like Bruce? But he remembers that first night, back when he’d caught Bruce with the Joker, and he knows that he doesn’t want to be that, not  _ ever _ if he can help it. Well, if not the Hunt, then maybe the Stranger, like Dick– but that doesn’t feel  _ right _ – so then maybe the Eye, like Babs, and that’s better, he thinks, because a patron that is all about knowing and thinking and seeing feels like the perfect haven from something like the fog.

But he notices, as he lies on his back in the floor of the cave, that there are spiderwebs glistening on the ceiling, and the sounds of scuttling legs in the shadows, and he realises that he might not have a choice, and the Web are– the Web aren’t  _ bad _ . If there’s  _ anything _ he wants right now, it’s control over his life, his powers, his very state of existence. 

He dozes off in the middle of a tape and wakes up wrapped in spider-silk, a frighteningly large spider perched on his chest. He tries not to scream, keeping eye contact with it, and he thinks he sees it nod before it scurries away down his body, and disappears into the shadows of the cave.

Tim pulls his arms free, and begins clawing the spiderweb from his body, skin crawling. When there’s enough of it gone that he feels he can move again, he gets up and runs back up to the manor, heading straight for his room and the shower in the adjourned bathroom. He stands in there for forty minutes, until almost all of the strands are gone, save for the ones that hang from the tips of his fingers. He turns the water off and sits on the side of the bath, staring at them for a long time.

_ Marionette strings _ , he thinks, looking at them, and wonders just what he’s gotten himself into this time.

* * *

He tries to go home, after randomly dissolving into smoke stops being a problem, but his parents’ eyes are clouded with fog, and they don’t recognise him as he stands on the doorstep.

“Oh, are you one of Wayne’s new foster children?” they ask, and Tim hesitates before nodding.

“Yes,” he says. “I am. I just wanted to… introduce myself.” The words sound hollow. His parents try to make small talk, but he just turns around and walks away, and ignores their comments about  _ rudeness _ and  _ disrespect _ . He’s sure the fog will make them forget that too, before too long. 

* * *

He sees strings, threads, connecting things, and it becomes easy, to figure out what’s going on and where, to know just what strings he needs to pull for any given outcome. He starts maneuvering Bruce’s prey into easy-to-corner places, and Bruce is equal parts grateful and put out by it. 

He uses the strings in his daily life, too, tweaking people to make sure he can get through his day without too much hassle. Dick shoots him worried glances about it, sometimes, tries to explain to Tim that he really doesn’t mind some minor inconveniences, but Tim just replies that he doesn’t see the point in struggling with this when they don’t have to. 

Barbara tries to talk to him, once Dick’s given up.

“I know what it’s like,” she tells him. “The obsession, the feeling of finally being in control, of finally knowing the things that you need to keep your friends and family safe. But the Web isn’t any different from the Lonely; they are two sides of the same coin. They may feel different, but in the end, they want you in the same place: alone, with all of your friends gone, and nothing holding you back from hurting people. You need to keep the people you love close. And you need to be afraid of what you become without them to hold you back.”

Tim scowls. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” he tells her. 

“Fear is a fact of life,” she replies. “Either you’re afraid, or you’re a monster. Pick one.”

* * *

One of his plans almost gets his classmates killed. 

He chooses fear.

* * *

His breath comes hot and quick and then suddenly he’s no longer in his room in the manor, he’s on a beach, fog laid over him like a blanket, dampening the panic but no– no– he wants to feel it, he wants to think, he wants– 

He sees them, the spider-silk tendrils glistening in the dim light, and grabs them, and  _ pulls _ .

Tim wakes up in the manor, breathing hard, everything suddenly vivid and bright around him. He pushes his head into his hands and tries to calm down.

_ Okay,  _ he thinks.  _ Okay. I can do this. _

For the first time in his life, he actually believes it.

* * *

Tim’s life becomes a tightrope walk: lean too far in one direction, and he ends up dissolving into smoke, lost in a place that is overwhelmingly empty; lean too far in the other, and the webs will become tangled, and tangle him up until his own will is indistinguishable from that of his patron. 

It’s not easy, and far too often he finds himself falling in one direction or another, but now the others know what to look for, they are always there to pick him up. Dick will hold him tight in his arms as he shakes from the chills that come in the aftermath of a trip to the Lonely. Babs will help him pull the cobwebs out of his hair and from over his eyes. Bruce will check in with him, remind him to pay attention to the calls he’s hearing, so he can decide when to answer and when to ignore. And later, there is Steph and Cass and Kon, who are all there for him too, and Tim thinks this may be the most loved he’s ever been in his life, and isn’t  _ that _ ridiculous, that he’d had to become a monster to find love, at the hands of other monsters?

He thinks back to the empty manor next door and the fog that still fills its halls, even to this day, and looks around at his Pack– his  _ family _ – and thinks that he can handle the days when he speaks smoke, and the days when he has to pick spider-silk out of his teeth, if it means he gets to have them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen. tim has BIG martin blackwood energies. (or martin has big tim energies?)
> 
> today's chapter title is from smell!: "time and space are at my back / performing disappearing acts / now I can escape the smell of smoke"


	6. so much more than the wars you've won

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her father does not catch her– she’s too good for that– but that does not stop others from going after her, others who see a little girl alone in the night and decide that she is an easy target. They are wrong, of course, but she doesn’t blame them for that assumption– how could they know that the child they’re looking at was born in blood and raised in fire, that she has always been a weapon before she was a girl? She tries to go gentle on them, does not kill them like her father taught, does not even maim, most of the time, if she can help it, because she doesn’t want to hurt people anymore, but sometimes they give her no choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was fun until i realised that i had to somehow write two characters in the same scene who used the same pronouns and no names and realised that i'd horribly fucked up
> 
> chapter warnings: blood, death, references to gore, corpses, child abuse, earthquakes, falling

She is made long before her birth with conspiratory whispers and plans passed through encoded emails and surreptitiously handed-off notes. She is a plan decades in the making, as the Order of Blood come together, establish hierarchy, test their skills against one another in years of bloody, vicious war, and choose their chosen ones. She is a ritual of blood and fire and screams, a fierce, violent love that leaves corpses in its wake. When she is finally born, they call her The One Who Is All, and her father spirits her away to raise her into the Slaughter’s martyr.

He does not teach her to read or write or speak, but he does teach her to punch and kick and kill. He takes her to battlefields and makes her stand in the midst of gunfire, makes her watch as bodies fall to the ground, forces her to do nothing. Sometimes the dead fall too close, and she winds up with blood and gore splattered across her skin and hair and clothes, and her father slaps her hand away when she tries to wipe herself clean. These are the battles that make the news, the ones that go down in history, the ones so violent and cruel that those who make it out alive wish they had not made it out at all.

She does not have a name but she has a purpose, a destiny: she is to be a Door. When she comes of age she will open, and out of her will spill all the horrors her father forces her to see, tenfold. She will open, and pure, raging violence will flow out in a river of blood, and the world will be stuck in an endless, bloody war, where no one is safe and everyone is afraid. She doesn’t see how it will be different, because endless, bloody war with no safety and overwhelming fear is all she has ever known. 

But sometimes she sees people, when her father guides her past the outskirts of civilisation, sees children her own age laughing and playing in the streets, ignorant of the violence that plagues the world, and she begins to understand that what she knows is not what she _should_ know. She begins to understand that she has been wronged, and she begins to understand that she does not want to be a Door. She wants to protect those laughing, smiling faces. She doesn’t want to hurt anymore.

So when her father forces her to kill, she turns around, punches him in the face, and flees into the night.

* * *

She runs, and she runs, and she runs, but she cannot leave the fighting behind.

Her father does not catch her– she’s too good for that– but that does not stop others from going after her, others who see a little girl alone in the night and decide that she is an easy target. They are wrong, of course, but she doesn’t blame them for that assumption– how could they know that the child they’re looking at was born in blood and raised in fire, that she has always been a weapon before she was a girl? She tries to go gentle on them, does not kill them like her father taught, does not even maim, most of the time, if she can help it, because she doesn’t want to hurt people anymore, but sometimes they give her no choice.

She sticks to the shadows, never stays in one place for too long, avoids crowds. She still cannot speak, so she doesn’t, and avoids any sort of situation where she’d have to, stowing away on trains and in the holds of cargo-ships. She doesn’t know where any of them are going, except that they will take her away from her father, and that’s all that she cares about. 

* * *

The day she arrives in Gotham is no different from her arrival in any other city: she sneaks off-board of the ship she’s been hiding on, and disappears into the dark, twisting alleys of the city. She will spend a day here, restock her supplies, and then stow away on another boat. She is tired of the constant movement, but she is even more afraid of what might find her if she lingers for too long in one place.

Then the earthquake hits.

* * *

She spots them as she slinks through a garden of warehouses, hoping to find some shelter for the night. A cluster of dark figures are walking in procession down the waterfront, bearing a long, wooden box between them. A coffin, she will later learn, a thing that holds dead bodies, something she is wholly unfamiliar with– in her experience, corpses are simply left out to rot in the sun and decompose in their own blood. 

There is something about these people that makes her skin crawl, a dark sense of dread settling on her shoulders, and so she follows them, sticking to the shadows. As she gets closer, the scent of wet earth and cloying sand hits her nose and makes her gag, and she sees the seaweed draped over the coffin dripping saltwater onto the hard pavement, and the dirt that crumbles from its bearers, and the feeling of dread intensifies. She feels that familiar humming under her skin, the part of her that is blood and screams and violence, the part of her that is Slaughter and Door and weapon, and it urges her to act now, to kill them all before they have a chance to do whatever it is they’re doing.

She wants to give in to the urge, but holds herself back, because she does not want to be that, anymore, does not want to be an omen of blood and death and fear, and so she forces herself to breathe and stalk and watch and _wait_ , until she has a better idea of what’s happening and how to stop it. 

The procession leads her to a field filled with stone– a graveyard, she will learn later, another rite of death that she has not been allowed to be privy to– and they gather around a hole in the earth that is dark and yawning and seems to suck the world into it. They lift the coffin, and begin to chant as they lower it, slowly, into the grave.

The buzzing under her skin turns frantic, and her resolve buckles, because everything in her being is screaming at her to stop this, and she goes to dart out from her hiding place when a blur of gold-and-purple streaks across her vision, crashing into a member of the procession and sending them both careening into the grave. The chanting cuts off, the coffin falls to the wayside, and she _moves_ , finally, except she does not move for the blood or screams, she moves for the girl who is falling into the earth, and catches her wrist.

Everything comes to a sudden stop, and silence falls, suffocating. The girl who is purple-and-gold stares up at her with wide, scared eyes, and she tries to communicate that she is safe, now, that the One Who is All has her and will not let her go. The abyss beneath them pulls, trying to tug them down, and she can hear its whispers in her mind, but they do not speak her language, the language of blood and fire, and so they slide off of her like rainwater. She adjusts her grip, holds on to the girl who is gold-and-purple, and the two of them hang there in suspended animation for what feels like an age.

Then the stillness is replaced by chaos as more people move out from the shadows of the cemetery, diving for the procession and pulling them away from the grave, away from the earth, and then there are hands on her and pulling her away, too, pulling purple-and-gold to safety, and she can breathe again. Around them, the earth is shaking, things are falling, and the earth is cracking, but the procession has fled, and she holds on to purple-and-gold and her rescuer until things are still once again.

The one who had rescued her– tall and dark and animalistic, twin pricks of light the only indication that this thing has face or form at all– tries to speak to her, to say something, but she does not understand. She just squeezes the wrist of purple-and-gold, who she has not let go of yet, and nods to her. The girl hesitates, then nods back, and she lets go, taking several hesitant steps backwards before turning and racing away. She thinks she hears them shouting after her, but she does not stop or look back.

* * *

Things change, in the aftermath. There is agitation in the streets. The city goes quiet, then loud, then quiet again, a rhythm that she is more than familiar with. The song of violence echoes through the streets, beating in time with her heart, and she knows the lyrics of this city’s war, of every city’s war, better than she knows herself but she does not have the words to sing them.

No boats leave the harbour in the days and weeks following the quake, and being stuck makes her antsy– but no one is coming in, either, so she feels content that her father will not find her. She watches the fights from the shadows. She sees the moves, clumsy and inelegant, and knows that she could do much better. She sees the most efficient ways to take down both sides, and something within her strains to join in, to unleash the tide of pain within her, but she holds back. She forces herself to walk away from smoking aftermaths.

She looks for the weak. The young, the old, the helpless, and she helps them. Helping is new to her, and the first few times she tries, she doesn’t get it quite right, and frustration and despair well up in her because she does not want to hurt these people but she cannot figure out how not to. She is sharp like a knife and blunt like a stone and piercing like an arrow and heavy with the weight of her sins and all she wants is to be _gentle_ . To be soft, like grass beneath her feet, refreshing like the breeze that ruffles her hair, comforting like the shadows that blanket her at night. She wants to be everything that she was not made to be, needs to be what her nature is not, and it is _hard_ , but she tries, and the first time a child smiles at her and wraps his arms around her neck in thanks she knows that the effort is worth it.

* * *

A man approaches her one day in the street. He wants her to come with him, and he does not mean her harm, and so she follows him, through town and up the stairs to an apartment where she is introduced to a woman who sits in a chair and smiles at her with tired eyes. The woman says words, but she does not understand them– she does understand, however, that the woman wants to help her, and so she nods, and takes the woman’s offered hand.

* * *

Learning language should not be easy– it shouldn’t even be possible. But Babs is of the Eye, and she Knows things, and she can make other people Know things, too, and so it is easy for her to slowly feed knowledge into her brain, and make things make sense. Speaking is still difficult, still feels unnatural and forbidden, but it is getting easier, and she understands other people now when they speak to her, and it’s like stepping into a whole new world she never knew existed. 

It is– it is _exhausting_ , sometimes, having to put words to concepts that she had before, but words also give her concepts that had not been possible without them, and she is grateful for that. It is also exhausting having to interpret words, sometimes, and then there is _lying_ , something that was not possible in her first language and is incredibly frustrating to deal with. She dislikes liars, and when she expresses this, Babs smiles and tells her that she is an honest person. She likes that, she thinks, being honest.

In the back of her mind she is making a collection of words that people call her. So far she has _creepy_ and _quiet_ and _honest_ and _kind_ and _good_ , and she is relieved that this is what people see in her. These words are hers, and they are not _weapon_ and _Door_ and _monster_ , because that not is not what she is, despite what they tried to make her. 

Language is overwhelming but it is freedom and relief and proof that she is her own being, and she relishes it for that.

* * *

She sits in the small gap between the desk and the wall and watches as dark creatures fill the room. She recognises some of them, like her rescuer, the tall one who’s darker than the shadows around him. There are three others with him, wearing clothes of night that disguise their features– but not enough that she can’t pick out one of them as purple-and-gold, and she feels relief that the girl is okay.

“She’s hiding,” Babs says to her rescuer. “She’ll come out if she feels comfortable. I won’t force her.” She feels a surge of gratitude, and she wants to express it, to tap Babs on the wrist and give her a small smile. She can’t do that without coming out of her corner, though, and she’s comfortable here, so she waits. Holds her tongue and listen as they talk about the state of the city, about things calming down, about petitions to the government and attempts to rebuild. Purple-and-gold and the two other shadows are largely quiet, only chiming in when needed, and she decides that she’s ready, now, and slinks out of her hiding spot.

The room goes quiet. Babs gives her an encouraging smile; she nods back, just the tiniest dip of her head. She turns to her rescuer, and bows her head. “Thank you,” she says. She looks up, and though the darkness disguises his expression, she thinks he might be smiling at her.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” he says to her. “We were worried about you, when you ran off like that.” She blinks, surprised.

“Oh,” she says. “Did not think you would…” She trails off, unable to find the right words, but he nods like he understands.

“It’s okay. At least we know that you’re safe, now.”

Purple-and-gold steps forward and reaches up, pulling the darkness from around her head to smile at her. “Thanks,” she says. “For catching me, I mean. You really saved me there.” She laughs, a little awkward, but genuine, and receives a smile in return. “I’m Stephanie, by the way. Do… You have a name?” She seems hesitant, asking, and the darkest one gives her a disapproving look. Steph winces. 

The One Who is All shakes her head. “No,” she says, quiet. “I was given Titles, but not… not a name.” She feels shame burn in her, and that one is new. 

“That’s okay,” Stephanie tells her. “Not having a name just means you get to choose one. We can go through some lists, and you can pick out one you like! Um. If you want to, of course.”

She smiles, at that, really smiles, and nods. “I would like that,” she replies, quiet, thankful. She glances around at the other three dark ones. “You all have names?” she asks. They nod.

“I’m Dick,” one of them says. “The foggy one is Tim.” And on second glance, the shorter of the two does some slightly more ephemeral and hazy than the others. 

“Bruce,” her rescuer says. Then, “We’d like to help you. Is that okay?” She hesitates.

“Help?”

“Keep you safe. Give you people to rely on.” 

She considers it for a moment. “Protect?”

“That’s right. We’ll protect you.”

And he is Dark but he is _gentle_ and Babs trusts him and she trusts her and she thinks it would be nice to be protected, to not have to run to be safe. So she nods.

“Yes,” she says. “Help.”

* * *

Stephanie is true to her word, and shows up a couple days later with a book that she calls a baby name dictionary. “I am not a baby,” the One Who is All points out, and Stephanie laughs.

“They don’t make a lot of adult name dictionaries, unfortunately,” she says. “C’mon, let’s get set up on the couch, I brought snacks.”

She still isn’t very good at reading, so Stephanie sits and reads to her. She gets frustrated, because there are so _many_ , how is she meant to choose one? She flops down with a huff, turning her face away and burying it in a pillow. 

“Too much?” Stephanie asks, sounding sheepish. She makes a noise of assent.

“Next one,” she says. 

“Huh?”

“Next name. Mine.”

“Are you sure?” 

She nods. “What is it?”

“Cassandra. It’s Greek, it means _to shine or excel over man_.”

She tries out the name on her mind’s tongue. _Cassandra._ She lifts her head from the cushion, and nods. “Cassandra,” she repeats. “Good.”

Stephanie grins, holds out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Cassandra. Can I call you Cass?” _Cass._ She likes that one, too. She nods, takes the hand. Stephanie’s smile widens. “Great, Cass. You can call me Steph, if you like.”

“Thank you, Steph.”

* * *

Bruce– sometimes he is called Batman, a title like hers– comes to spend time with her, in the Oracle’s tower. Sometimes, he takes her out, up onto the roof, and points up at the sky, tracing pictures in the stars. He calls them constellations, and tells her stories about ancient heroes with the stars’ names. The stories rarely have happy endings, and she points this out to him.

“They’re tragedies,” he says. “That’s what we call stories with unhappy endings.”

“Why?” she asks, not asking why they are called that but rather why they are written. He understands her, of course, and hums thoughtfully.

“I think that tragic stories help us process unhappy things in real life,” he says eventually. “Sometimes bad things happen, and we have no way to control them, and they can be hard to deal with. So we write and read tragedies, and learn to cope with grief and loss and betrayal in this controlled, fictional space, so that when we’re faced with it in real life, we’re better equipped to understand and handle it.” 

She nods. “Life is tragic.” It is a statement, but more so a question. He understands that, too. He understands her, the way she thinks and speaks, like no one else ever has, and that makes her feel warm inside.

“Life is filled with tragic things,” he says. “But I don’t think it has to be tragic overall. Even when things are dark and bleak and hopeless, we find things to love and protect and hope for. When I was first becoming an Avatar, I was so _scared_ , I thought my life was over, but really, it was just beginning. It’s because of all this that I managed to meet my Pack– my family. They make it worth it.” He turns his head towards her. “The past few months have been harrowing, but I got to meet you– I think that makes some of it worth it.”

She nods. “Worth it,” she says decisively, and he smiles at her. She looks up at the sky, and lifts a finger to trace a shape several times. “Bat,” she says. He laughs.

“It does look like a bat, doesn’t it?”

She points at him, and then back up. “ _Bat_.”

“That’s me?” She nods. “Do you want to hear the story behind the constellation?” She nods, and settles in as he talks, telling her the story of a little boy who was afraid of the dark, and how he grew into a man with a family of mis-matched monsters serving half a dozen entities, and the love shared between them all, anchoring them to humanity.

He ends it with, “Tragedy struck once again when the Buried attempted a ritual that caused an Earthquake to topple half of the city, but in the aftermath the Pack adopted a bright young woman who was raised in violence and blood and had never spoken a word, and choose to be gentle and kind and chose a name of her own that meant _to excel_ , and embodied that by being better than all of them,” and she turns and crushes him with a hug.

* * *

Her father finds her, eventually, because she’s not running anymore, and isn’t hard to find once she’s been in one place for too long. She faces him on a rooftop, fists clenched as he stalks towards her, ready to spring into action.

But then the Batman is dropping out of the darkness and landing in front of her, wings outstretched, and growling at her father. 

“What are you doing?” her father says, and a shiver runs down her spine because it is the first time she’s heard his voice. He sounds… ordinary, and she doesn’t know why she’s surprised, because she’s met enough monsters by now to know that most of them can blend in with ordinary humans without a second glance.

“Leave,” Batman growls.

“Not without my daughter.”

“She is under my Pack’s protection.”  
A laugh. “You have no idea what you’re doing, Batman,” her father spits. “I know she looks like a little girl, but she isn’t, not really. She’s a ritual-piece, the Slaughter’s gateway into this world, and no matter what you do to me you cannot protect her from that destiny.”

“You’re wrong,” Batman growls. “She is not a Door, or a weapon, or an object, or any of these things you see her as, and she does _not_ belong to you. She is a person with her own mind and she can make her own decisions.”

“Then let her! Let her come out here and _tell us_ what she wants.” His voice is mocking, and Cass realises that he doesn’t know she can speak, so she presses her fingers against Bruce’s back, and he hesitates slightly before stepping to the side for her. She walks forward a few steps, looks her father dead in the eyes.

It’s funny. Throughout her childhood, he had always seemed untouchable, a silent stone monster who forced her to be silent and stone, too, who forced her into a life of blood and fire that she did not want and could not escape. Now, he just looks like a man– a monster, yes, but also a man, tall and imposing and _pathetic_. She sees desperation in him and realises that everything was riding on her being a good little pawn for him, and she has taken that away from him, and she feels a vicious pride well up deep within her. 

“I,” she says, and watches his face go ashen pale, “am not what you made me to be. I am Cassandra, and I am _gentle_ and _kind_ , and I am not your knife and I am not your Door. I am me. And I am not your daughter.” 

She feels Batman’s hand come down on her shoulder, senses his pride, sees her father’s fury and allows the smile inside her to show upon her face.

“You heard her, Cain,” Batman says, and her father snarls.

“You’re both fools,” he snaps. “It doesn’t matter what she wants. She _is_ the Slaughter’s chosen, and she cannot run away from it forever. When the time comes, she will open the Door, mark my words.”

“Then we will deal with that when it becomes a problem. For now, leave, and never return to this city, or else my Pack and I _will_ hunt you down, and we will show no mercy.”

Her father snarls once more, and then he is gone, disappearing down the side of the building. Batman turns to her. 

“I’m proud of you, Cass,” he says, pulling her into his side in a half-embrace. She leans her head against his darkness-cloaked torso. 

“Not his daughter,” she says, decisive. 

“Good. You deserve better than him.”

She glances up at him, calculating.

“Yours?” she asks, a little hesitant, and his white eyes widen. 

"You want me to be your father?"

She nods. “We are Pack. Family.” He takes a moment to shake off the stunned silence, and then smiles at her, wider than she’s ever seen.

“You know,” he says, “I always wanted a daughter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for anyone who's curious about the TMA elements of this story, i've added some episode recommendations in the fic end notes! so if you don't know about TMA but want some more context on some of the things happening here (or just like the aesthetic of a certain entity and want more of those vibes), or if you do know TMA and want to see where i'm pulling inspo from, now you can.
> 
> today's chapter title is from heirloom! i honestly recommend listening to the full song, but the title comes from the final chorus: "you are so much more than your father's son / you are so much more than the wars you've won"

**Author's Note:**

> So! As I've been working on this fic, I've been compiling a small list of TMA episodes that, if you're interested or intrigued by any of the concepts I've been playing with here, you can look further into them! They are, of course, not necessary for understanding this story, and if you want to start listening to TMA proper I'd 100% recommend starting from the beginning and working through the backlog. But if you're just intrigued by a certain character's powers or want to get a better grip on the source material as I continue this series (I have... so many plans), these are some good places to start.  
> Some of these episodes may contain pretty major TMA spoilers, so if you're at all worried about that, proceed with caution. Also mind the trigger warnings for any of these episodes! Anything marked with a * is something I think is more relevant to your understanding of this fic than maybe some of my other recommendations.
> 
>  **General**  
>  MAG 111 - Family Business* (start around the 21 minute mark for an explanation of Avatars, Monsters, Entities, and Rituals)  
> MAG 151 - Big Picture
> 
>  **The Dark** \- Bruce  
> The fear of the dark, the unknown, what we cannot see.  
> MAG 63 - The End of the Tunnel  
> MAG 86 - Tucked In 
> 
> **The Hunt** \- Bruce  
> The animalistic/primal fear of being chased or hunted, of being prey. Avatars of the Hunt are Hunters, and tend to become more animalistic.  
> MAG 82 - The Eyewitnesses  
> MAG 112 - The Thrill of the Chase  
> MAG 176 - Blood Ties*
> 
>  **The Stranger** \- Dick  
> The fear of the unknown, the uncanny, the unfamiliar; the creeping sense that something isn't quite right. The Circus of the Other is a circus run by Stranger Avatars/Monsters.  
> MAG 44 - Tightrope  
> MAG 104 - Sneak Preview 
> 
> **The Eye** \- Babs  
> The fear of being watched, of having your secrets exposed, the fear that you are suffering for something watching; the drive to know and understand, even if what your discoveries may destroy you.  
> MAG 142 - Scrutiny  
> MAG 148 - Extended Surveillance 
> 
> **The Desolation** \- Jason  
> The fear of pain, burning, destruction, of losing everything you love.  
> MAG 37 - Burnt Offering  
> MAG 89 - Twice as Bright*  
> MAG 139 - Chosen (less relevant to Jason here and more relevant to Cass, despite being a Desolation statement; Cass' storyline essentially features her being the Slaughter's version of Agnes Montague)
> 
>  **The Lonely** \- Tim  
> The fear of isolation, being alone, being cut off or disconnected from society. The Lonely also refers to a place, a kind of alternate dimension where you are completely alone.  
> MAG 150 - Cul-de-Sac  
> MAG 159 - The Last  
> MAG 170 - Recollection*
> 
>  **The Web** \- Tim, Talia  
> The fear of being controlled and trapped and unaware of it; of being manipulated and being forced to do things against one's will; of having no free will.  
> MAG 81 - A Guest for Mr Spider  
> MAG 147 - Weaver*
> 
>  **The Slaughter** \- Cass  
> The fear of unpredictable, sudden violence.  
> MAG 7 - The Piper  
> MAG 125 - Civilian Casualties 
> 
> **The Corruption** \- Damian  
> Disgust; the fear of corruption, disease, bugs. Can manifest as (unhealthy) love and corrupted communities.  
> MAG 32 - Hive
> 
>  **The Spiral** \- the Joker  
> The fear of madness, that your senses are lying to you, that the world you know is wrong.  
> MAG 26 - A Distortion  
> MAG 74 - Fatigue  
> MAG 85 - Upon the Stair  
> MAG 101 - Another Twist*
> 
>  **The Buried** \- where the Bats' leave their prey, and the cause of the earthquake referenced in Cass' chapter  
> The fear of small spaces, suffocating, drowning, being buried alive. Being overwhelmed.  
> MAG 132 - Entombed  
> MAG 152 - A Gravedigger's Envy (the post-statement on this one was the inspiration for a lot of things in this fic)  
> MAG 166 - The Worms
> 
> Okay, ridiculously long end-notes done! Thank you for taking the time to read this fic, I appreciate your comments and kudos if you want to leave them!


End file.
